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SIR J-SH-A R-N-LDS IN A DOMINO. — DR. G-LDSM-TU IN AN OLD ENGLISH 

DRESS. 




Carton CMtian. 



(FULLY ILLUSTRATED.) 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS 

(FROM THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE) 

TO WHICH IS ADDED 

THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPALEON 

THE FOUR GEORGES 
THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS 

OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

CRITICAL REVIEWS and SELECTIONS 

{FROM PUNCH.) 



BY 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR 



NEW YORK 
CAXTON PUBLISHING CO. 

Tribune Building. 



?^% 



\1 



,982797 
1929 



CONTENTS. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

PAGB. 

On a Lazy Idle Boy 7 

On two Children in Black 12 

On Ribbons 19 

On some late Great Victories 29 

Thorns in the Cushion 35 

On Screens in Dining-Rooms 42 

Tunbridge Toys 48 

De Juventute 54 

On a Joke I once heard from the late Thomas Hood 67 

Round about the Christmas Tree. ... 76 

On a Chalk-Mark on the Door. 83 

On being Found Out. - 94 

On a Hundred Years Hence 99 

Small-Beer Chronicle 106 

Ogres 113 

On Two Roundabout Papers which I intended to Write 120 

A Mississippi Bubble 130 

On Letts's Diary. . . 138 

Notes of a Week's Holiday 146 

►^Nil Nisi Bonum 165 

On Half a Loaf — A Letter to Messrs. Broadway, Battery and 

Co., of New York, Bankers. 1 72 

The Notch on the Axe.— A Story k la Mode. Part 1 179 

« « « Part II 185 

« « '• Part I.I 193 

De Finibus 200 

On a Peal of Bells 208 

On a Pear-Tree 216 

Desseio's., .,,,,,,,...,,,, 223 



vi CONTENTS, 

PAGB. 

On some Carp at Sans Souci 233 

Autour de mon Chapeau 239 

On Alexandrines — A Letter to some Country Cousins 248 

On a Medal of George the Fourth 255 

" Strange to say, on Club Paper " 263 

The Last Sketch 268 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 

George the First 275 

George the Second 298 

George the Third 319 

George the Fourth 343 



THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Swift 371 

Congreve and Addison 401 

Steele 439 

Prior, Gay, and Pope 460 

Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding 494 

Sterne and Goldsmith 521 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

L On the Disinterment of Napoleon at St. Helena 553 

IL On the Voyage from St. Helena to Paris 564 

in. On the Funeral Ceremony 575 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 



George Cruikshank 595 

John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character 631 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



ON A LAZY IDLE BO Y. 

I HAD occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the little 
old town of Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where lies buried 
that very ancient British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,* who 
founded the Church of St. Peter, on Cornhill. Few people note 
the church nowadays, and fewer ever heard of the saint. In 
the cathedral at Chur, his statue appears surrounded by other 
sainted persons of his family. With tight red breeches, a 
Roman habit, a curly brown beard, and a neat little gilt crown 
and sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image : and, 
from what I may call his peculiar position with regard to Corn- 
hill, I beheld this figure of St. Lucius with more interest than I 
should have bestowed upon personages who, hierarchically, are, 
I dare say, superiors. 

The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the 
world — of the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, and 
rushing railways, and the commerce and intercourse of men. 
From the northern gate, the iron road stretches away to Ziirich, 
to Basle, to Paris, to home. From the old southern barriers, 
before which a little river rushes, and around which stretch the 
crumbling battlements of the ancient town, the road bears the 
slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow Rhine, through 
the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently over the 
Spliigen to the shores of Como. 

• Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, " from the table fast chained in St. Peter's 
Church, Cornhill ; " and says, "he was after some chronicle buried at London, and after 
some chronicle buried at Glowcester " — but, oh 1 these incorrect chroniclers! when Alban 
Butler, in the " Lives of the- Saints," v. xii., and Murray's " Handbook," and the Sacri» 
tstn at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb with my own eyes I 



8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, and 
pastoral, than this remote little Chur. What need have the 
inhabitants for walls and ramparts, except to build summer- 
houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to dry on them ? No 
enemies approach the great moulding gates : only at morn and 
even the cows come lowing past them, the village maidens 
chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the ever- 
voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, 
with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the 
gymnasium, and return thence at their stated time. There is 
one coffee-house in the town, and I see one old gentleman goes 
to it. There are shops with no customers seemingly, and the 
lazy tradesmen look out of their little windows at the single 
stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with baskets of queer 
little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with 
half-a-dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there 
is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There's nobody 
at the book-shop. " If you will have the goodness to come 
again in an hour," says the banker, with his mouthful of dinner 
at one o'clock, " you can have the money." There is nobody 
at the hotel, save the good landlady, the kind waiters, the brisk 
young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is in the Protestant 
church — (oh ! strange sight, the two confessions are here at 
peace !) — nobody in the Catholic church : until the sacristan, 
from his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies the traveller 
eyeing the monsters and pillars before the old shark-toothed 
arch of his cathedral, and comes out (with a view to remunera- 
tion possibly) and opens the gate, and shows you the venerable 
church, and the queer old relics in the sacristy, and the ancient 
vestments (a black velvet cope, amongst other robes, as fresh 
as yesterday, and presented by that notorious " pervert," 
Henry of Navarre and France), and the statue of St. Lucius who 
built St, Peter's Church, on Cornhill. 

What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town ! Has 
It been asleep these hundreds and hundreds of years, and is 
the brisk young Prince of the Sidereal Realms in his screaming 
car drawn by his snorting steel elephant coming to waken it ? 
Time was when there must have been life and bustle and com- 
merce here. Those vast, venerable walls were not made to 
keep out cows, but men-at-arms, led by fierce captains, who 
prowled about the gates, and robbed the traders as they passed 
in and out with their bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and 
their wains. Is the place so dead that even the clergy of the dif- 
ferent denominations can't quarrel .'' Why, seven or eight, or 



ON A LAZY IDLE BOY. 9 

a dozen, or fifteen hundred years ago (they haven't the register 
at St. Peter's up to that remote period. I dare say it was burnt 
in the fire of London) — a dozen hundred years ago, when there 
was some life in the town, St. Lucius was stoned here on ac- 
count of theological differences, after founding our church in 
Cornhill. 

There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take in the 
evening and mark the mountains round glooming with a deeper 
purple ; the shades creeping up the golden walls ; the river 
brawling, the cattle calling, the maids and chatterboxes round 
the fountains babbling and bawling ; and several times in the 
course of our sober walks we overtook a lazy slouching boy, or 
hobbledehoy, with a rusty coat, and trousers not too long, and 
big feet trailing lazily one after the other, and large lazy hands 
dawdling from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy hands, a 
little book, which my lad held up to his face, and which I dare 
say so charmed and ravished him, that he was bUnd to the 
beautiful sights around him ; unmindful, I would venture to lay 
any wager, of the lessons he had to learn for to-morrow; for- 
getful of mother waiting supper, and father preparing a scold- 
ing ; absorbed utterly and entirely in his book. 

What was it that so fascinated the young student, as he 
stood by the river shore ? Not the Pons Asmortim. What 
book so delighted him, and blinded him to all the rest of the 
world, so that he did not care to see the apple-woman with her 
fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of Eve) the pretty girls 
with their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round the 
fountain ! What was the book ? Do you suppose it was Livy, 
or the Greek grammar } No ; it was a Novel that you were 
reading, you lazy, not very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible 
boy ! It was D'Artagnan locking up General Monk in a box, 
or almost succeeding in keeping Charles the First's head on. 
It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'lf cutting himself out of 
the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I like best 
myself — novels without love or talking, or any of that sort of 
nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, 
and rescuing) — cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming 
to the island of Monte Cristo. O Dumas ! O thou brave, 
kind, gallant old Alexandre ! I hereby offer thee homage, and 
give thee thanks for many pleasant hours. I have read thee 
(being sick in bed) for thirteen hours of a happy day, and had 
the ladies of the house fighting for the volumes. Be assured 
that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go so far as to let 
the reader here pronounce the eulogium, or insert the name of 



I o RO UNDABO UT PAPERS. 

his favorite author) ; and as for the anger, or it may be, the 
reverberations of his schoolmaster, or the remonstrances of his 
father, or the tender pleadings of his mother that he should 
not let the supper grow cold — I don't believe the scapegrace 
cared one fig. No ! Figs are sweet, but fictions are sweeter. 

Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white-robed 
warriors, or grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa 
or Beyrout, and listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels 
out of " Antar " or the " Arabian Nights ? " I was once pres- 
ent when a young gentleman at table put a tart away from him, 
and said to his neighbor, the Younger Son (with rather a fatu- 
ous air), " I never eat sweets." 

" Not eat sweets ! and do you know why ? " says T. 

"Because I am past that kind of thing," says the young 
gentleman. 

" Because you are a glutton and a sot ! " cries the Elder 
(and Juvenis winces a little). " All people who have natural, 
healthy appetites, love sweets ; all children, all women, all East- 
ern people, whose tastes are not corrupted by gluttony and 
strong drink." And a plateful of raspberries and cream disap- 
peared before the philosopher. "» 

You take the allegory ? Novels are sweets. All people with 
healthy literary appetites love them — almost all women ; — a 
vast number of clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the 
most learned physicians in England said to me only yesterday, 
" I have just read So-and-So for the second time" (naming one 
of Jones's exquisite fictions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, 
mathematicians, are notorious novel-readers ; as well as young 
boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. Who has 
not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night 
when he was not at whist ? 

As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether he 
will like novels when he is thirty years of age. He is taking 
too great a glut of them now. He is eating jelly until he will 
be sick. He will know most plots by the time he is twenty, so 
that he will never be surprised when the Stranger turns out to 
be the rightful earl, — when the old waterman, throwing off his 
beggarly gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of his vari- 
ous orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves himself 
to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will recognize the 
novelist's same characters, though they appear in red-heeled 
pumps and ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century. 
He will get weary of sweets, as boys of private schools grow (or 
used to grow, for I have done growing some little time myself, 




A LAZY IDLE BOY. 



ON A LAZY IDLE BOY. 1 1 

and the practice may have ended too) — as private schoolboys 
used to grow tired of the pudding before their mutton at dinner. 

And pray what is the moral of this apologue ? The moral I 
take to be this : the appetite for novels extending to the end of 
the world ; far away in the frozen deep, the sailors reading them 
to one another during the endless night ; — far away under the 
Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs and elders hearkening to the 
poet as he recites his tales ; far away in the Indian camps, where 

the soldiers listen to 's tales, or 's, after the hot day's 

march ; far away in little Chur yonder, where the lazy boy pores 
over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his eyes ; — the 
demand being what we know it is, the merchant must supply it, 
as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or Calcutta. 

But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, it will 
disagree with him ; and so surely, dear youth, will too much 
novels cloy on thee. I wonder, do novel-writers themselves 
read many novels ? If you go into Gunter's, you don't see those 
charming young ladies (to whom I present my most respectful 
compliments) eating tarts and ices, but at the proper even-tide 
they have good plain wholesome tea and bread-and-butter. Can 
anybody tell me does the author of the " Tale of Two Cities " 
read novels ? does the author of the " Tower of London " de- 
vour romances ? does the dashing " Harry Lorrequer " delight 
in " Plain or Ringlets " or " Sponge's Sporting Tour ? " Does 
the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the books which 
delighted our young days, " Darnley," and " Richelieu," and 
" Delorme," * relish the works of Alexander the Great, and thrill 
over the " Three Musqueteers ? " Does the accomplished author 
of the " Caxtons " read the other tales in Blackwood? (For 
example, that ghost-story printed last August, and which for my 
part, though I read it in the public reading-room at the " Pa- 
vilion Hotel " at Folkestone, I protest frightened me so that I 
scarce dared look over my shoulder.) Does " Uncle Tom " ad- 
mire " Adam Bede ; " and does the author of the " Vicar of 
Wrexhill " laugh over the " Warden " and the " The Three 
Clerks ? " Dear youth of ingenuous countenance and ingenu- 
ous pudor ! I make no doubt that the eminent parties above 
named all partake of novels in moderation — eat jellies — but 
mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast and boiled. 

Here, dear youth aforesaid ! our Cornhill Magazine owners 
strive to provide thee with facts as well as fiction ; and though 

• By the way, what a strange fate is that which befell the veteran novelist ! He was 
appointed her majesty's Consul-General in Venice, the only city in Europe where the 
famous " Two Cavaliers" cannot by any possibility be seen riding together. 



1 2 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

it does not become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least they 
invite thee to a table" where thou shalt sit in good company. 
That story of the " Fox " * was written by one of the gallant 
seamen who sought for poor Franklin under the awful Arctic 
Night : that account of China f is told by the man of all the em- 
pire most likely to know of what he speaks : those pages regard- 
ing Volunteers % come from an honored hand that has borne the 
sword in a hundred famous fields, and pointed the British guns 
in the greatest siege in the world. 

Shall we point out others ? We are fellow-travellers, and 
shall make acquaintance as the voyage proceeds. In the At- 
lantic steamers, on the first day out (and on high and holy days 
subsequently), the jellies set down on table are richly orna- 
mented ; mcdioque infonte leporum rise the American and British 
flags nobly emblazoned in tin. As the passengers remark this 
pleasing phenomenon, the Captain no doubt improves the 
occasion by expressing a l.ope, to his right and left, that the flag 
of Mr. Bull and his younger Brother may always float side by 
side in friendly emulation. Novels having been previously com- 
pared to jellies — here are two (one perhaps not entirely sac- 
charine, and flavored with an amari aliquid very distasteful to 
some palates) — two novels § under two flags, the one that an- 
cient ensign which has hung before the well-known booth of 
" Vanity Fair ; " the other that fresh and handsome standard 
which has lately been hoisted on " Barchester Towers." Pray, 
sir, or madam, to which dish will you be helped ? 

So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain Corn- 
stock press their guests to partake of the fare on that memor- 
ab'e " First day out," when there is no man, I think, who sits 
down but asks a blessing on his voyage, and the good ship dips 
over the bar, and bounds away into the blue water. 



ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK. 

Montaigne and " Howel's Letters " are my bedside books. 
If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me 
to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever, and don't 

• "The Search for Sir John Franklin. (From the Private Journal of an Officer of the 
* Fox.') " 

t " The Chinese and the Outer Barbarians." By Sir John Bownng. 

X " Our Volunteers." By Sir John Burgoyne. 

$ " Level the Widower " and " Framley Parsonage." 



ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK. 



13 



weary me, I like to hear them tell their old stories over and 
over again. I read them in the dozy hours, and only half re- 
member them. I am informed that both of them tell coarse 
stories. I don't heed them. It was the custom of their time, 
as it is of Highlanders and Hottentots, to dispense with a part 
of dress which we all wear in cities. But people can't afford 
to be shocked either at Cape Town or at Inverness every time 
they meet an individual who wears his national airy raiment. I 
never knew the " Arabian Nights " was an improper book until 
I happened once to read it in a " family edition." Well, qui 
s* excuse. * * * Who, pray, has accused me as yet ? Here am I 
smothering dear good old Mrs. Grundy's objections, before she 
has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarce ever tire of 
hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the 
Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King 
Charles's Council. Their egotism in nowise disgusts me. I 
hope I shall always like to hear men, in reason, talk about 
themselves. What subject does a man know better.? If I 
stamp on a friend's corn, his outcry is genuine — he confounds 
my clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking about 
himself, and expressing his motion of grief or pain in a manner 
perfectly authentic and veracious. I have a story of my own, 
of a wrong done to me by somebody, as far back as the year 1838 : 
whenever I think of it, and have had a couple glasses of wine, 
I cannot help telling it. The toe is stamped upon : the pain is 
just as keen as ever : I cry out, and perhaps utter imprecatory 
language. I told the story only last Wednesday at dinner : — 

*' Mr. Roundabout," says a lady sitting by me, " how comes 
it that in your books there is a certain class (it may be of men, 
or it may be of women, but that is not the question in point) — 
how comes it, dear sir, there is a certain class of persons whom 
you always attack in your writings, and savagely rush at, goad, 
poke, toss up in the air, kick, and trample on ? " 

I couldn't help myself. I knew I ought not to do it. I told 
her the whole story, between the entrees and the roast. The 
wound began to bleed again. The horrid pang was there, as 
keen and as fresh as ever. If I live half as long as Tithonus,* 
that crack across my heart can never be cured. There are 
wrongs and griefs that can't be mended. It is all very well of 
you, my dear Mrs. G., to say that this spirit is unchristian, and 
that we ought to forgive and forget, and so forth. How can I 
forget at will ? How forgive ? I can forgive the occasional 

* " Tithonus," by Tennyson, had appeared in the preceding (the 2d) number of tho 
Cornhill Magazine. 



14 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



waiter who broke my beautiful old decanter at that very dinner. 
I am not going to do him any injury. But all the powers on 
earth can't make that claret-jug whole. 

So, you see, I told the lady the inevitable story. I was 
egotistical. I was selfish, no doubt ; but I was natural, and 
was telling the truth. You say you are angry with a man for 
talking about himself. It is because you yourself are selfish, 
that that other person's Self does not interest you. Be in- 
terested by other people and with their affairs. Let them prattle 
and talk to you, as I do my dear old egotists just mentioned. 
When you have had enough of them, and sudden hazes come 
over your eyes, lay down the volume ; pop out the candle, and 
dormcz bien. I should like to write a nightcap book — a book 
that you can muse over, that you can smile over, that you can 
yawn over — a book of which you can say, " Well, this man is 
so and so and so and so ; but he has a friendly heart (although 
some wiseacres have painted him as black as Bogey), and you 
may trust what he says." I should like to touch you sometimes 
with a reminiscence that shall waken your sympathy, and make 
you say, lo anchh have so thought, felt, smiled, suffered. Now, 
how is this to be done except by egotism ? Li?iea recta brevis- 
sima. That right line " I " is the very shortest, simplest, 
straightforwardest means of communication between us, and 
stands for what it is worth and no more. Sometimes authors 
say, " The present writer has often remarked ; " or, " The un- 
dersigned has observed;" or " Mr. Roundabout presents his 
compliments to the gentle reader, and begs to state," &c. : but 
" I " is better and straighter than all these grimaces of modesty : 
and although these are Roundabout Papers, and may wander 
who knows whither, I shall ask leave to maintain the upright 
and simple perpendicular. When this bundle of egotisms is 
bound up together, as they may be one day, if no accident pre- 
vents this tongue from wagging, or this ink from running, they 
will boreyou very likely ; so it would to read through " HowePs 
Letters" from beginning to end, or to eat up the whole of a 
ham : but a slice on occasion may have a relish : a dip into the 
volume at random and so on for a page or two : and now and 
then a smile ; and presently a gape ; and the book drops out 
of your hand ; and so, boti soir, and pleasant dreams to you. 
I have frequently seen men at clubs asleep over their humble 
servant's works, and am always pleased. Even at a lecture I 
don't mind, if they don't snore. Only the other day A'hen 
my friend A. said " You've left off that Roundabout busi- 
ness, I see ; very glad you have," I joined in the general roaf 



ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK. 



IS 



of laughter at the table. I don't care a fig whether Archilochus 
likes the papers or no. You don't like partridge, Archilochus, 
or porridge, or what not ? Try some other dish. I am not going 
to force mine down your throat, or quarrel with you if you re- 
fuse it. Once in America a clever and candid woman said to 
me, at the close of a dinner, during which I had been sitting 
beside her, *' Mr. Roundabout, I was told I should not like 
you ; and I don't." " Well, ma'am," says I, in a tone of the 
most unfeigned simplicity, " I don't care." And we became 
good friends immediately, and esteemed each other ever after. 

So, my dear Archilochus, if you come upon this paper, and 
say, " Fudge ! " and pass on to another, I for one shall not be 
in the least mortified. If you say, " What does he mean by 
calling this paper Oti Two Children in Black, when there's noth- 
ing about people in black at all, unless the ladies he met (and 
evidently bored) at dinner, were black women ? What is all 
this egotistical pother ? A plague on his I's ! " My dear fellow, 
if you read " Montaigne's Essays," you must own that he might 
call almost any one by the name of any other, and that an essay 
on the Moon or an essay on Green Cheese would be as appro- 
priate a title as one of his on Coaches, on the Art of Discours- 
ing, or Experience, or what you will. Besides, if I have a 
subject (and I have) I claim to approach it in a roundabout 
manner. 

You remember Balzac's tale of the Peau de Chagrin, and 
how every time the possessor used it for the accomplishment of 
some wish the fairy Peau shrank a little and the owner's life 
correspondingly shortened ? I have such a desire to be well 
with my public that I am actually giving up my favorite story. 
I am killing my goose, I know I am. I can't tell my story of 
the children in black after this ; after printing it, and sending 
it through the country. When they are gone to the printer's 
these little things become public property. I take their hands. 
I bless them. I say, " Good-by, my little dears." I am quite 
sorry to part with them : but the fact is, I have told all my 
friends about them already, and don't dare to take them about 
with me any more. 

Now every word is true of this little -anecdote, and I sub- 
mit that there lies in it a most curious and exciting little mys- 
tery. I am like a man who gives you the last bottle of his '25 
claret. It is the pride of his cellar ; he knows it, and he has 
a right to praise it. He takes up the bottle, fashioned so 
slenderly — takes it up tenderly, cants it with care, places it be- 
fore his friends, declares how good it is, with honest pride, and 



l6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

wishes he had a hundred dozen bottles more of the same wine 
in his cellar. Si quid novisti. &c., I shall be very glad to hear 
from you. I protest and vow I am giving you the best I have. 

Well, who those little boys in black were, I shall never 
probably know to my dying day. They were very pretty little 
men, with pale faces, and large, melancholy eyes ; and they had 
beautiful little hands, and little boots, and the finest little shirts, 
and black paletots lined with the richest silk ; and they had 
picture-books in several languages, English, and French, and 
German, I remember. Two more aristocratic-looking little men 
I never set eyes on. They were travelling with a very handsome, 
pale lady in mourning, and a maid-servant dressed in black, too ; 
and on the lady's face there was the deepest grief. The little 
boys clambered and played about the carriage, and she sat 
watching. It was a railway-carriage from Frankfort to Hei- 
delberg. 

I saw at once that she was the mother of those children, and 
going to part from them. Perhaps I have tried parting with my 
own, and not found the business very pleasant. Perhaps I 
recollect driving down (with a certain trunk and carpet-bag on 
the box) with my own mother to the end of the avenue, where 
we waited — only a few miruutes — until the whirring wheels of 
that " Defiance " coach were heard rolling towards us as certain 
as death. Twang goes the horn ; up goes the trunk ; down 
come the steps. Bah ! I see the autumn evening : I hear 
the wheels now : I smart the cruel smart again : and, boy or 
man, have never been able to bear the sight of people parting 
from their children. 

I thought these little men might be going to school for the 
first time in their lives ; and mamma might be taking them to the 
doctor, and would leave them with many fond charges, and little 
wistful secrets of love, bidding the elder to protect his younger 
brother, and the younger to be gentle, and to remember to pray 
to God always for his mother, who would pray for her boy 
too. Our party made friends with these young ones during 
the little journey ; but the poor lady was too sad to talk except 
to the boys now and again, and sat in her corner, pale, and 
silently looking at them. 

The next day, we saw the lady and her maid driving in the 
direction of the railway-station, without the boys. The parting 
had taken place, then. That night they would sleep among 
strangers. The little beds at home were vacant, and poor 
mother might go and look at them. Well, tears flow, and 
friends part, and mothers pray every night all over the world. 



ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK. 



17 



I dare say we went to see Heidelberg Castle, and admired the 
vast shattered walls, and quaint gables ; and the Neckar running 
its bright course through that charming scene of peace and 
beauty ; and ate our dinner, and drank our wine with relish. 
The poor mother would eat but little Abendessen that night ; 
and, as for the children — that first night at school — hard bed, 
hard words, strange boys bullying, and laughing, and jarring 
you with their hateful merriment — as for the first night at a 
strange school, we most of us remember what that is. And 
the first is not the worst, my boys, there's the rub. But 
each man has his share of troubles, and, I suppose, you must 
have yours. 

From Heidelberg we went to Baden-Baden : and, I dare 
say, saw Madame de Schlangenbad and Madame de la Cruche- 
casse'e, and Count Punter, and honest Captain Blackball. And 
whom should we see in the evening, but our two little boys, 
walking on each side of a fierce, yellov/-faced, bearded man ! 
We wanted to renew our acquaintance with them, and they 
were coming forward quite pleased to greet us. But the father 
pulled back one of the little men by his paletot, gave a grim 
scowl, and walked away. I can see the children now looking 
rather frightened away from us and up into the father's face, or 
the cruel uncle's — which was he ? I think he was the father. 
So this was the end of them. Not school, as I at first had 
imagined. The mother was gone, who had given them the 
heaps of pretty books, and the pretty studs in the shirts, and 
the pretty silken clothes, and the tender — tender cares ; and 
they were handed to this scowling practitioner of Trente et 
Quarante. Ah ! this is worse than school. Poor little men ! 
poor mother sitting by the vacant little beds ! We saw the 
children once or twice after, always in Scowler's company ; but 
we did not dare to give each other any marks of recognition. 

From Baden we went to Basle, and thence to Lucerne, and 
so over the St. Gothard into Italy. From Milan we went to 
Venice ; and now comes the singular part of my story. In 
Venice there is a little court of which I forget the name ; but 
in it is an apothecary's shop, whither I went to buy some 
remedy for the bites of certain animals which abound in Venice. 
Crawling animals, skipping animals, and humming, flying 
animals ; all three will have at you at once ; and one night 
nearly drove me into a strait-waistcoat. Well, as I was coming 
out of the apothecary's with the bottle of spirits of hartshorn in 
my hand (it really does do the bites a great deal of good), whom 
should I light upon but one of my little Heidelberg-Baden boys ! 



l8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

I have said how handsomely they were dressed as long as 
they were with their mother. *\Vhen I saw the boy at Venice, 
who perfectly recognized me, his only garb was a wretched 
yellow cotton gown. His little feet, on which I had admired 
the little shiny boots, were wiihout shoe or stocking. He looked 
at me, ran to an old hag of a woman, who seized his hand ; and 
with her he disappeared down one of the thronged lanes of the 
city. 

From Venice we went to Trieste (the Vienna railway at that 
time was only opened as far as Laybach, and the magnificent 
Semmering Pass was not quite completed). At a station be- 
tween Laybach and Graetz, one of my companions alighted for 
refreshment, and came back to the carriage saying : — 

" There's that horrible man from Baden, with the two little 
boys." 

Of course, we had talked about the appearance of the little 
boy at Venice, and his strange altered garb. My companion 
said they were pale, wretched-looking, and dressed quite shabbily. 

I got out at several stations, and looked at all the carriages. 
I could not see my little men. From that day to this I have 
never set eyes on them. That is all my story. Who were they ? 
What could they be ? How can you explain that mystery of the 
mother giving them up ; of the remarkable splendor and ele- 
gance of their appearance while under her care ; of their bare- 
footed squalor in Venice, a month afterwards ; of their shabby 
habiliments at Laybach ? Had the father gambled away his 
money, and sold their clothes.-' How came they to have passed 
out of the hands of a refined lady (as she evidently was, with 
whom I first saw them) into the charge of quite a common 
woman like her with whom I saw one of the boys at Venice } 
Here is but one chapter of the story. Can any man write the 
next, or that preceding the strange one on which I happened 
to light ? Who knows ? the mystery may have some quite 
simple solution, I saw two children, attired like little princes, 
taken from their mother and consigned to other care ; and a fort- 
night afterwards, one of them barefooted and like a beggar. 
Who will read this riddle of The Two Children in Black ? 



ON RIBBONS. 1 9 



ON RIBBONS. 

The uncle of the present Sir Louis N. Bonaparte, K.G., 
&c., inaugurated his reign as Emperor over the neighboring 
nation by establishing an Order, to which all citizens of his 
country, military, naval, and civil — all men most distinguished 
in science, letters, arts, and commerce — were admitted. The 
emblem of the Order was but a piece of ribbon, more or less 
long or broad, with a toy at the end of it. The Bourbons had 
toys and ribbons of their own, blue, black, and all-colored ; and 
on their return to dominion such good old Tories would nat- 
urally have preferred to restore their good old Orders of Saint 
Louis, Saint Esprit, and Saint Michel ; but France had taken 
the ribbon of the Legion of Honor so to her heart that no 
Bourbon sovereign dared to pluck it thence. 

In England, until very late days, we have been accustomed 
rather to pooh-pooh national Orders, to vote ribbons and crosses, 
tinsel gewgaws, foolish foreign ornaments, and so forth. It is 
known how the Great Duke (the breast of whose own coat was 
plastered with some half-hundred decorations) was averse to the 
wearing of ribbons, medals, clasps, and the like, by his army. 
We have all of us read how uncommonly distinguished Lord 
Castlereagh looked at Vienna, where he was the only gentleman 
present without any decoration whatever. And the Great Duke's 
theory was, that clasps and ribbons, stars and garters, were 
good and proper ornaments for himself, for the chief officers of 
his distinguished army, and for gentlemen of high birth, who 
might naturally claim to wear a band of garter blue across their 
waistcoats ; but that for common people your plain coat, with- 
out stars and ribbons, was the most sensible wear. 

And no doubt you and I are as happy, as free, as comfort- 
able ; we can walk and dine as well ; we can keep the winter's 
cold out as well, without a star on our coats, as without a 
feather in our hats. How often we have laughed at the absurd 
mania of the Americans for dubbing their senators, members of 
Congress, and States' representatives. Honorable ! We have a 
right to call our Privy Councillors Right Honorable, our Lords' 
sons Honorable, and so forth : but for a nation as numerous, 
well educated, strong, rich, civilized, free as our own, to dare 
to give its distinguished citizens titles of honor — monstrous 



20 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



assumption of low-bred arrogance and parvenu vanity ! Out 
titles are respectable, but theirs absurd. Mr. Jones, of London, 
a Chancellor's son, and a tailor's grandson, is justly Honorable, 
and entitled to be Lord Jones at his noble father's decease : but 
Mr. Brown, the senator from New York, is a silly upstart for 
tacking Honorable to his name, and our sturdy British good 
sense laughs at him. Who has not laughed (I have myself) at 
Honorable Nahum Dodge, Honorable Zeno Scudder, Honora- 
ble Hiram Boake, and the rest ? A score of such queer names 
and titles I have smiled at in America. And, mutato nojuine f 
I meet a born idiot, who is a peer and born legislator. This 
drivelling noodle and his descendants through life are your 
natural superiors and mine — your and my children's superiors. 
I read of an alderman kneeling and knighted at court : I see a 
gold-stick waddling backwards before Majesty in a procession, 
and if we laugh, don't you suppose the Americans laugh too ? 

Yes, stars, garters, orders, knighthoods, and the like, are 
folly. Yes, Bobus, citizen and soap-boiler, is a good man, and 
no one laughs at him or good Mrs. Bobus, as they have their 
dinner at one o'clock. But who will not jeer at Sir Thomas 
on a melting day and Lady Fobus, at Margate, eating shrimps 
in a donkey-chaise ? Yes, knighthood is absurd : and chivalry 
an idiotic superstition : and Sir Walter Manny was a zany : 
and Nelson, with his flaming stars and cordons, splendent upon 
a day of battle, was a madman : and Murat, with his crosses 
and orders, at the head of his squadrons charging victorious, 
was only a crazy mountebank, who had been a tavern-waiter, 
and was puffed up with absurd vanity about his dress and legs. 
And the men of the French line at Fontenoy, who told Messieurs 
de la Garde to fire first, were smirking French dancing-masters ; 
and the Black Prince, waiting upon his royal prisoner, was act- 
ing an inane masquerade : and chivalry is naught ; and Honor 
is humbug ; and Gentlemanhood is an extinct folly ; and Ambi- 
tion is madness; and desire of distinction is criminal vanity ; 
and glory is bosh ; and fair fame is idleness ; and nothing is 
true but two and two ; and the colour of all the world is drab ; 
and all men are equal ; and one man is as tall as another ; and 
one man is as good as another — and a great dale betther, as 
the Irish philosopher said. 

Is this so ? Titles and badges of honor are vanity ; and in 
the American Revolution you have his Excellency General 
Washington sending back, and with proper spirit sending back, 
a letter in which he is not addressed as Excellency and General. 
Titles are abolished ; and the American Republic swarms with 



ON RIBBONS. 21 

men claiming and bearing them. You have the French soldiel 
cheered and happy in his dying agony, and kissing with frantic 
joy the cliief's hand who lays the little cross on the bleeding 
bosom. At home you have the Dukes and Earls jobbing and 
intriguing for the Garter; the Military Knights grumbling at 
the Civil Knights of the Bath ; the little ribbon eager for the 
collar ; the soldiers and seamen from India and the Crimea 
marching in procession before the Queen, and receiving from 
her hands the cross bearing her royal name. And, remember, 
there are not only the cross wearers, but all the fathers and 
friends ; all the women who have prayed for their absent heroes ; 
Harry's wife, and Tom's mother, and Jack's daughter, and 
Frank's sweetheart, each of whom wears in her heart of hearts 
afterwards the badge which son, father, lover, has won by his 
merit ; each of whom is made happy and proud, and is bound 
to the country by that little bit of ribbon. 

I have heard, in a lecture about George the Third, that, at 
his accession, the King had a mind to establish an order for 
literary men. It was to have been called the Order of Minerva 
— I suppose with an Owl for a badge. The knights were to 
have worn a star of sixteen points, and a yellow ribbon ; and 
good old Samuel Johnson was talked of as President, or Grand 
Cross, or Grand Owl, of the society. Now about such an order 
as this there certainly maybe doubts. Consider the claimants, 
the difficulty of settling their claims, the rows and squabbles 
amongst the candidates, and the subsequent decision of pos- 
terity ! Dr. Beattie would have ranked as first poet, and twenty 
years after the sublime Mr. Hayley would, no doubt, have 
claimed the Grand Cross. Mr. Gibbon would not have been 
eligible, on account of his dangerous freethinking opinions ; 
and her sex, as well as her republican sentiments, might have 
interfered with the knighthood of the immortal Mrs. Catharine 
Macaulay. How Goldsmith would have paraded the ribbon at 
Madame Cornelys's, or the Academy dinner ! How Peter 
Pindar would have railed at it ! Fifty years later, the noble 
Scott would have worn the Grand Cross and deserved it ; but 
Gifford would have had it ; and Byron, and Shelly, and Hazlitt, 
and Hunt would have been without it ; and had Keats been 
proposed as officer, how the Tory prints would have yelled with 
rage and scorn ! Had the star of Minerva lasted to our present 
time — but I pause, not because the idea is dazzling, but too 
awful. Fancy the claimants, and the row about their preced- 
ence ! Which philosopher shall have the grand cordon ? — which 
the collar 1 — which the little scrap no bigger than a butter-cup } 



22 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Of the historians — A, say — and C, and F, and G, and S, and T, 
— which shall be Companion and which Grand Owl ? Of the 
poets, who wears, or claims, the largest and brightest star? Of 
the novelists, there is A, and B and C D ; and E (star of first 
magnitude, newly discovered), and F (a magazine of wit), and 
fair G, and H, and I, and brave old J, and charming K, and L, 
and M, and N, and O (fairtwinklers), and I am puzzled between 
three P's — Peacock, Miss Pardoe, and Paul Pry — and Queechy, 
and R, and S, and T, mere et Jils, and very likely U, O gentle 
reader, for who has not written his novel now-a-days ? — who has 
not a claim to the star and straw-colored ribbon ? — and who 
shall have the biggest and largest ? Fancy the struggle ! 
Fancy the squabble ! Fancy the distribution of prizes ! 

Who shall decide on them ? Shall it be the sovereign ? 
shall it be the Minister for the time being? and has Lord 
Palmerston made a deep study of novels ? In this matter the 
late Ministry,* to be sure, was better qualified ; but even then, 
grumblers who had not got their canary cordons, would have 
hinted at professional jealousies entering the Cabinet ; and, 
the ribbons being awarded. Jack would have scowled at his be- 
cause Dick had a broader one ; Ned been indignant because 
Bob's was as large : Tom would have thrust his into the drawer, 
and scorned to wear it at all. No no : the so-called literary 
world was well rid of Minerva and her yellow ribbon. The 
great poets would have been indifferent, the little poets jealous, 
the funny men furious, the philosophers satirical, the historians 
supercilious, and, finally, the jobs without end. Say, ingenuity 
and cleverness are to be rewarded by State tokens and prizes — 
and take for granted the Order of Minerva is established — who 
shall have it ? A great philosopher ? no doubt we cordially 
salute him G.C.M. A great historian ? G.C.M. of course. A 
great engineer ? G.C.M. A great poet ? received with acclam- 
ation G.C.M. A great painter ? oh ! certainly, G.C.M. If a 
great painter, why not a great novelist ? Well, pass, great nov- 
elist, G.C.M. But if a poetic, a pictorial, a story-telling or 
music-composing artist, why not a singing artist ? Why not a 
basso-profondo ? Why not a primo tenore ? And if a singer, 
why should not a ballet-dancer come bounding on the stage 
with his cordon, and cut capers to the music of a row of decor- 
ated fiddlers ? A chemist puts in his claim for having invented 
a new color ; an apothecary for a new pill ; the cook for a new 
sauce ; the tailor for a new cut of trousers. We have brought 

* That of Lord Derby, in 1859, which included Mr. Disraeli and Sir Edward Bulwel 
Lytton. 



ON RIBBONS. 



23 



the star of Minerva down from the breast to the pantaloons. 
Stars and garters ! can we go any farther ; or shall we give the 
shoemaker the yellow ribbon of the order for his shoetie ? 

When I began this present Roundabout excursion, I think 
I had not quite made up my mind whether we would have an 
Order of all the Talents or not : perhaps I rather had a hanker- 
ing for a rich ribbon and gorgeous star, in which my family 
might like to see me at parties in my best waistcoat. But then 
the door opens, and there come in, and by the same right too, 
Sir Alexis Soyer ! Sir Alessandro Tamburini ! Sir Agostino 
Velluti ! Sir Antonio Paganini (violinist) ! Sir Sandy McGuf- 
fog (piper to the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh) ! Sir 
Alcicle P'licflac (premier danseur of H.M. Theatre) ! Sir Harley 
Quin and Sir Joseph Grimaldi (from Covent Garden) ! They 
have all the yellow ribbon. They are all honorable, and clever, 
and distinguished artists. Let us elbow through the rooms, 
make a bow to the lady of the house, give a nod to Sir George 
Thrum, who is leading the orchestra, and go and get some 
champagne and seltzer-water from Sir Richard Gunter, who is 
presiding at the buffet. A national decoration might be well 
and good : a token awarded by the country to all its bene-7ncren- 
tibus : but most gentlemen with Minerva stars would, I think, 
be inclined to wear very wide breast-collars to their coats. 
Suppose yourself, brother penman, decorated with this ribbon, 
and looking in the glass, would you not laugh ? Would not 
wife and daughters laugh at that canary-colored emblem ? 

But suppose a man, old or young, of figure ever so stout, 
thin, stumpy, homely, indulging in looking-glass reflections with 
that hideous ribbon and cross called V. C. on his coat, would 
he not be proud ? and his family, would not they be prouder ? 
For your nobleman there is the famous old blue garter and star, 
arrd welcome. If I were a marquis — if I had thirty — forty 
thousand a year (settle the sum, my dear Alnaschar, according 
to your liking), I should consider myself entitled to mv seat in 
Parliament and to my garter. The garter belongs to the Orna- 
mental Classes. Have you seen the new magnificent Pavo 
Spicifcr at the Zoological Gardens, and do you grudge him his 
jewelled coronet and the azure splendor of his waistcoat 1 I 
like my Lord Mayor to have a gilt coach ; my magnificent mon- ' 
arch to be surrounded by magnificent nobles : I huzzay respect- 
fully when they pass in procession. It is good for Mr. Briefless 
(50, Pump Court, fourth floor) that there should be a Lord 
Chancellor, with a gold robe and fifteen thousand a year. It is 
good for a poor curate that there should be splendid bishops at 



24 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS 



Fulham and Lambeth : their lordships were poor curates once, 
and have won, so to speak, their ribbon. Is a man who puts 
into a lottery to be sulky because he does not win the 
twenty thousand pounds prize ? Am I to fall into a rage, and 
bully my family when I come home, after going to see Chats- 
worth or Windsor, because we have only two little drawing- 
rooms? Welcome to your garter, my lord, and shame upon 
him qui fnal y pe7ise ! 

So I arrive in my roundabout way near the point towards 
which I have been trotting ever since we set out. 

In a voyage to America, some nine years since, on the 

seventh or eighth day out from Liverpool, Captain L came 

at eight bells as usual, talked a little to the persons right and 
left of him, and helped the soup with his accustomed politeness. 
Then he went on deck, and was back in a minute, and operated 
on the fish, looking rather grave the while. 

Then he went on deck again ; and this time was absent, it 
may be, three or five minutes, during which the fish disappeared, 
and the entrees arrived, and the roast beef. Say ten minutes 
passed — I can't tell after nine years. 

Then L came down with a pleased and happy counten- 
ance this time, and began carving the sirloin : " We have seen 
the light," he said. " Madam, may I help you to a little gravy, 
or a little horse-radish 1 " or what not .'' 

I forget the name of the light; nor does it matter. It was 
a point off Newfoundland for which he was on the look-out, and 
so well did the " Canada " know where she was, that, between 
soup and beef, the captain had sighted the headland by which 
his course was lying. 

And so through storm and darkness, through fog and mid- 
night, the ship had pursued her steady way over the pathless 
ocean, and roaring seas, so surely that the officers who sailed 
her knew her jDlace within a minute or two, and guided us with a 
wonderful providence safe on our way. Since the noble Cunard 
Company has run its ships, but one accident, and that through 
the error of a pilot, has happened on the line. 

By this little incident (hourly of course repeated, and trivial 
to all sea-going people) I own I was immensely moved, and 
never can think of it but with a heart full of thanks and awe. 
We trust our lives to these seamen, and how nobl}^ they fulfil 
their trust ! They are, under heaven, as a providence for us. 
Whilst we sleep, their untiring watchfulness keeps guard over 
us. All night through that bell sounds at its season, and tells 
how our sentinels defend us. It rang when the " Amazon * 



ON RIBBONS. 



25 



was on fire, and chimed its heroic signal of duty, anu courage 
and honor. Think of the dangers these seamen undergo for 
us : the hourly peril and watch ; the familiar storm ; the 
dreadful iceberg; the long winter nights when the decks are 
as glass, and the sailor has to climb through icicles to bend the 
stiff sail on the yard ! Think of their courage and their kind- 
nesses in cold, in tempest, in hunger, in wreck ! " The women 
and children to the boats," says the captain of the " Birken- 
head," and, with the troops formed on the deck, and the crew 
obedient to the word of glorious command, the immortal ship 
goes down. Read the story of the " Sarah Sands : " — 

"SARAH SANDS. 

" The screw steam-ship ' Sarah Sands,' 1,330 registered tons, was chartered by the East 
India Company in the autumn of 1S58, for the conveyance of troops to India. She was 
commanded by John Squire Castle. Slie took out a part of the 54th Regiment, upwards 
of 350 persons, besides tlie wives and cliildren of some of tlie men, aud the families of some 
of the officers. All went well till the nth November, when the ship had reached lat. 14 S., 
long. 56 E., upwards of 400 miles from the Mauritius. 

" Between three and four p.m. on that day a very strong smell of fire was perceived 
arising from the after-deck, and upon going below hito the hold, Captain Castle found it to 
be on fire, and immense volumes of smoke arising from it. Endeavors were made to reach 
the seat of the fire, but in vain ; the smoke and heat were too much for the men. There 
was, however, no confusion. Every order was obeyed with the same coolness and courage 
with which it was given. The engine was immediately stopped. All sail was taken in, and 
the ship brought to the wind, so as to drive the smoke and fire, which was in the after-part 
of the ship, astern. Others were, at the same time, getting fire-hoses fitted and passed to 
the scene of the fire. The fire, however, continued to increase, and attention was directed 
to the ammunition contained in the powder-magazines, which were situated one on each side 
the ship immediately above the fire. The starboard magazine was soon cleared. But by 
this time the whole of the after-part of the ship was so much enveloped in smoke that it was 
scarcely possible to stand, and great fears were entertained oh account of the port magazine. 
Volunteers were called for, and came immediately, and, under the guidance of Lieutenant 
Hughes, attempted to clear the port magazine, which they succeeded in doing, with the 
exception, as was supposed, of one or two barrels. It was most dangerous work. The men 
became overpowered with the smoke and heat, and fell ; and several, while thus engaged, 
were dragged up by ropes, senseless. 

" The flames soon burst up through the deck, and running rapidly along the various 
cabins, set the greater part on fire. 

" In the meantime Captain Castle took steps for lowering the boats. There was a heavy 
gale at the time, but they were launched without the least accident. The soldiers were 
mustered on deck ; — there was no rush to the boats ; — and the men obeyed the word of com- 
mand as if on parade. The men were informed that Captain Castle did not despair of sav- 
ing the ship, but that they must be prepared to leave her if necessary. The women and 
children were lowered into the port lifeboat, under the charge of Mr. Very, third officer, 
who had orders to keep clear of the ship until recalled. 

" Captain Castle then commenced constructing rafts of spare spars. In a short time, 
three were put together, which would have been capable of saving a great number of those 
on board. Two were launched overboard, and safely moored alongside, and then a third 
was left across the deck forward, ready to be launched. 

" In the meantime the fire had made great progress. The whole of the cabins were one 
body of fire, and at about 8.30 p.m. fiames burst through the upper deck, and shortly after 
the mizen rigging caught fire. Fears were entertained of the ship paying off, in which case 
the flames would have been swept forwards by the wind; but fortunately the after-braces 
were burnt through, and the main-yard swung round, which kept the ship's head to wind. 
About nine p.m., a fearful explosion took place in the port magazine, arising, no doubt, 
from the one or two barrels of powder which it had been impossible to remove. By this 
time the ship was one body of flame, from the stem to the main rigging, and thinking it 
scarcely possible to save her. Captain Castle called Major Brett (then in command of the 
troops, for the Colonel was in one of the boats) forward, and, telling him that he feared the 
ship was lost, requested him to endeavor to keep order amongst the troops till the last, but» 



26 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

at the same time, to use every exertion to check the fire. Providentially, the iron bulkhead 
in the after-part of the ship withstood the action of the flames, and here all efforts were con- 
centrated to keep it cool. 

" ' No person,' says the captain, ' can describe the manner in which the men worked to 
keep the fire back ; one party were below, keeping the bulk-head cool, and when several 
were dragged up senseless, fresh volunteers took their places, who were, however, soon in 
the same state. At about ten p.m., the rnaintopsail-yard took fire. Mr. Welch, one 
quartermaster, and four or five soldiers, went aloft with wet blankets, and succeeded in extin- 
guishing it, but not until the yard and mast were nearly burnt through. The work of fighting 
the fire below continued for hours, and about midnight it appeared that some impression 
was made ; and after that, the men drove it back, inch by inch, until daylight, when they 
had completely got it under. The ship was now in a frightful plight. The after-part was 
literally burnt out — merely the shell remaining — the port quarter blown out by the explosion : 
fifteen feet of water in the hold.' 

"The gale still prevailed, and the ship was rolling and pitching in a heavy sea, and tak- 
ing in large quantities of water abaft : the tanks, too, were rolling from side to side in the 
hold. 

" As soon as the smoke was partially cleared away. Captain Castle got spare sails and 
blankets aft to stop the leak, passing two hawsers round the stern, and setting them up. 
The troops were employed baling and pumping. This continued during the whole 
morning. 

" In the course of the day the ladies joined the ship. The boats were ordered alongside, 
but they found the sea too heavy to remam tliere. The gig had been abandoned during the 
night, and the crew, under Mr. Wood, fourth officer, had got into another of the boats. 
The troops were employed the remainder of the day baling and pumping, and the crew secur- 
ing the stern. All hands were employed dunng the following night baling and pumping, the 
boats being moored alongside, where they received some damage. At daylight on the 13th, 
the crew were employed hoisting the boats, the troops were working manfully baling and 
pumping. Latitude at noon, 13 deg. 12 min. south. At five p.m., the foresail and foretop- 
sail were set, tlie rafts were cut away, and the sliip bore for the Mauritius. On Thursday, 
the 19th, she sighted the Island of Rodrigues, and arrived at Mauritius on Monday the 23d." 

The Nile and Trafalgar are not more glorious to our country, 
are not greater victories than these won by our merchant- 
seamen. And if you look in the Captains' reports of any 
maritime register, you will see similar acts recorded every day. 
I have such a volume for last year, now lying before me. In 
the second number, as I open it at hazard, Captain Roberts, 
master of the ship " Empire," from Shields to London, reports 
how on the 14th ult. (the 14th December, 1859), he, " being off 
Whitby, discovered the ship to be on fire between the main 
hold and boilers : got the hose from the engine laid on, and 
succeeded in subduing the fire ; but only apparently ; for at 
seven the next morning, the ' Dudgeon ' bearing S.S.E. seven 
miles' distance, the fire again broke out, causing the ship to be 
enveloped in flames on both sides of midships : got the hose 
again into play and all hands to work with buckets to combat 
with the fire. Did not succeed in stopping it till four p.m., to 
effect which, were obliged to cut away the deck and top sides, 
and throw overboard part of the cargo. The vessel was very 
much damaged and leaky : determined to make for the Hum- 
ber. Ship was run on shore, on the mud, near Grimsby 
harbor, with five feet of water in her hold. The donkey-engine 
broke down. The water increased so fast as to put out the 
furnace fires and render the ship almost unmanageable. On 



O.V RIBBONS 



27 



the tide flowing, a tug towed the ship off the mua, ana got her 
into Grimsby to repair." 

On the 2nd of November, Captain Strickland, of the "Pur- 
chase "brigantine, from Liverpool to Yarmouth, U.S., " encount- 
ered heavy gales from W.N.W. to W.S.W., in lat. 43° N., long. 
34" W., in which we lost jib, foretopn:iast, staysail, topsail, and 
carried away the foretopmast stays, bobstays and bowsprit, 
headsails, cut-water and stern, also started the wood ends, 
which caused the vessel to leak. Put her before the wind and 
sea, and hove about twenty-five tons of cargo overboard to 
lighten the ship forward. Slung myself in a bowline, and by 
means of thrusting 2 5^ inch rope in the opening, contrived to 
stop a great portion of the leak. 

" December i6ih. — The crew continuing night and day at the 
pumps, could not keep the ship free ; deemed it prudent for 
the benefit of those concerned to bear up for the nearest port. 
On arriving in lat 48° 45' N., long. 230 W., observed a vessel 
with a signal of distress flying. ]\Iade towards her, when she 
proved to be the bark ' Carleton,' water-logged. The captain 
and crew asked to be taken off. Hove to, and received them 
on board, consisting of thirteen men : and their ship was 
abandoned. We then proceeded on our course, the crew of 
the abandoned vessel assisting all they could to keep my ship 
afloat. We arrived at Cork harbor on the 27th ult.' 

Captain Coulson, master of the brig " Othello," reports that 
his brig foundered oft" Portland, December 27 ; — encountering 
a strong gale, and shipping two heavy seas in succession, which 
hove the ship on her beam-ends. " Observing no chance of 
saving the ship, took to the long boat, and within ten minutes 
of leaving her saw the brig founder. We were picked up 
the same morning by the French ship ' Commerce de Paris,' 
CSptain Tombarel." 

Here, in a single column of a newspaper, what strange, 
touching pictures do we find of seamen's dangers, vicissitudes, 
gallantry, generosity ! The ship on fire — the captain in the 
gale slinging himself in a bowline to stop the leak — the French- 
man in the hour of danger coming to his British comrade's res- 
cue — the brigantine, almost a wreck, working up to the barque 
with the signal of distress flying, and taking oft" her crew of 
thirteen men. "We then proceeded on our course, the crew oj 
the abandoned vessel assisting all they could to keep 7ny ship afloat. ^^ 
What noble, simple words ! What courage, devotedness, 
brotherly love ! Do they not cause the heart to beat, and the 
eyes to fill ? 



28 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

This is what seamen do daily, and for one another. One 
lights occasionally upon different stories. It happened, not 
very long since, that the passengers by one of the great ocean 
steamers were wrecked, and after undergoing the most severe 
hardships, were left, destitute and helpless, at a miserable coal- 
ing port. Amongst them were old men, ladies, and children. 
When the next steamer arrived, the passengers by that steamer 
took alarm at the haggard and miserable appearance of their 
unfortunate predecessors, and actually 7'e77ionstrated with their 
own captaiji, Jirging hi?fi fiot to take the poor a-eatures on board. 
There was every excuse, of course. The last-arrived steamer 
was already dangerously full : the cabins were crowded ; there 
were sick and delicate people on board — sick and delicate 
people who had paid a large price to the company for room, 
food, comfort, already not too sufficient. If fourteen of us are 
in an omnibus, will we see three or four women outside and say, 
" Come in, because this is the last 'bus, and it rains ? " Of 
course not : but think of that remonstrance, and of that Samari- 
tan master of the " Purchase " brigantine ! 

In the winter of '53, I went from Marseilles to Civita 
Vecchia, in one of the magnificent P. and O. ships, the " Val- 
etta," the master of which subsequently did distinguished 
service in the Crimea. This was his first Mediterranean voy- 
age, and he sailed his ship by the charts alone, going into each 
port as surely as any pilot. I remember walking the deck at 
night with this most skilful, gallant, well-bred and well-educated 
gentleman, and the glow of eager enthusiasm with which he 
assented, when I asked him whether he did not think a ribbon 
or ORDER would be welcome or useful in his service. 

Why is there not an Order of Britannia for British sea- 
men ? In the Merchant and the Royal Navy alike, occur 
almost daily instances and occasions for the display of science, 
skill, bravery, fortitude in trying circumstances, resource in 
danger. In the first number of the Corn hill Magazine, a friend 
contributed a most touching story of the M'Clintock expedition, 
in the dangers and dreadful glories of which he shared ; and 
the writer was a merchant captain. How many more are there 
(and, for the honor of England, may there be many like him !) 
— gallant, accomplished, high-spirited, enterprising masters of 
their noble profession ! Can our fountain of Honor not be 
brought to such men ? It plays upon captains and colonels in 
seemly profusion. It pours forth not illiberal rewards upon 
doctors and judges. It sprinkles mayors and aldermen. It 
bedews a painter now and again. It has spurted a baronetcy 



ON SOME LA TE ORE A T VICTORIES. 



29 



Upon two, and bestowed a coronet upon one noble man of 
letters. Diplomatists take their Bath in it as of right ; and it 
flings out a profusion of glittering stars upon the nobility of the 
three kingdoms. Cannot Britannia find a ribbon for her sailors ? 
The Navy, royal or mercantile, is a Service. The command of 
a ship, or the conduct of her, implies danger, honor, science, 
skill, subordination, good faith. It may be a victory, such as 
that of the " Sarah Sands ; " it may be discovery, such as that 
of the " Fox ; " it may be heroic disaster, such as that of the 
"Birkenhead;" and in such events merchant seamen, as well 
as royal seamen, take their share. 

Why is there not, then, an Order of Britannia? One day 
a young officer of the " Euryalus " * may win it ; and, having 
just read the memoirs of Lord Dundonald, I know who ought 
to have the first Grand Cross, 



ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES. 

On the i8th day of April last I went to see a friend in a 
neighboring Crescent, and on the steps of the next house beheld 
a group something like that here depicted. A newsboy had 
stopped in his walk, and was reading aloud the journal which 
it was his duty to deliver ; a pretty orange-girl, with a heap of 
blazing fruit, rendered more brilliant by one of those great blue 
papers in which oranges are now artfully wrapped, leant over the 
railing and listened : and opposite the nympha7n discentem there 
was a capering and acute-eared young satirist of a crossing- 
sweeper, who had left his neighboring professional avocation 
and chance of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the little 
newsboy. 

That intelligent reader, with his hand following the line as 
he read it out to his audience, was saying : — "And — now — Tom 
— coming up smiling — after his fall — dee — delivered a rattling 
clinker upon the Benicia Boy's — potato-trap — but was met by a 
— punishei on the nose — which," &c., &c. ; or words to that 
effect. Betty at 52 let me in, while the boy was reading his 
lecture ; and, having been some twenty minutes or so in the 
house and paid my visit, I took leave. 

The little lecturer was still at work on the 51 doorstep, and 

* Prince Alfred was serving on board the frigate " Euryalus " when this was written. 



30 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

his audience had scarcely changed their position. Having read 
every word of the battle myself in the morning, I did not stay 
to listen further ; but if the gentleman who expected his paper 
at the usual hour that day experienced delay and a little disap- 
pointment I shall not be surprised. 

I am not going to expatiate on the battle. I have read in 
the correspondent's letter of a Northern newspaper, that in the 
midst of the company assembled the reader's humble servant 
was present, and in a very polite society, too, of " poets, clergy- 
men, men of letters, and members of both Houses of Parlia- 
ment." If so, I must have walked to the station in my sleep, 
paid three guineas in a profound fit of mental abstraction, and 
returned to bed unconscious, for I certainly woke there about 
the time when history relates that the fight was over. 1 do not 
know whose colors I wore — the Benician's, or those of the 
Irish champion ; nor remember where the fight took place, 
which, indeed, no somnambulist is bound to recollect. Ought 
Mr. Sayers to be honored for being brave, or punished for being 
naughty ? By the shade of Brutus the elder, I don't know. 

In George II. 's time there was a turbulent navy lieutenant 
(Handsome Smith he was called — his picture is at Greenwich 
now, in brown velvet, and gold and scarlet ; his coat handsome, 
his waistcoat exceedingly handsome ; but his face by no means 
the beauty) — there was, I say, a turbulent young lieutenant who 
was broke on a complaint of the French ambassador, for oblig- 
ing a French ship of war to lower her topsails to his ship at 
Spithead. But, by the King's orders, Tom was next day made 
Captain Smith. Well, if I were absolute king, I would send 
Tom Sayers to the mill for a month, and make him Sir Thomas 
on coming out of Clerkenwell. You are a naughty boy, Tom ! 
but then, you know, we ought to love our brethren, though ever 
so naughty. We are moralists, and reprimand you ; and you 
are hereby reprimanded accordingly. But in case England 
should ever have need of a few score thousand champions, who 
laugh at danger ; who cope with giants ; who, stricken to the 
ground, jump up and gayly rally, and fall, and rise again, and 
strike, and die rather than yield — in case the country should 
need such men, and you should know them, be pleased to send 
lists of the misguided persons to the principal police stations, 
where means may some day be found to utilize their wretched 
powers, and give their deplorable energies a right direction. 
Suppose, Tom, that you and your friends are pitted against 
an immense invader — suppose you are bent on holding the 
ground, and dying there, if need be — suppose it is life, freedom. 



ON SOME LA TE GREA T VICTORIES. 



31 



honor, home, you are fighting for, and there is a death-dealing 
sword or rifle in your hand, with which you are going to resist 
some tremendous enemy who challenges your championship on 
your native shore ? Then, Sir Thomas, resist him to the death, 
and it is all right : kill him, and heaven bless you. Drive him 
into the sea, and there destroy, smash, and drown him ; and 
let us sing Laudamiis. In these national cases, you see, we 
override the indisputable first laws of morals. Loving your 
neighbor is very well, but suppose your neighbor comes over 
from Calais and Boulogne to rob you of ypur laws, your liber- 
ties, your newspapers, your parliament (all of which soine dear 
neighbors of ours have given up in the most self-denying man- 
ner) : suppose any neighbor were to cross the water and pro 
pose this kind of thing to us ? Should we not be justified in 
humbly trying to pitch him into the water ? If it were the King 
of Belgium himself we must do so. I mean that fighting, of 
course, is wrong ; but that there are occasions when, &c. — I 
suppose I mean that that one-handed fight of Sayers is one of 
the most spirit-stirring little stories ever told : and, with every 
love and respect for Morality — my spirit says to her, " Do, for 
goodness' sake, my dear madam, keep your true, and pure, and 
womanly, and gentle remarks for another day. Have the great 
kindness to stand a leetle aside, and just let us see one or two 
more rounds between the men. That little man with the one 
hand powerless on his breast facing yonder giant for hours, and 
felling him, too, every now and then ! It is the little 'Java' 
and the 'Constitution ' over again." 

I think it is a most fortunate event for the brave Heenan, 
who has acted and written since the battle with a true warrior's 
courtesy, and with a great deal of good logic too, that the battle 
was a drawn one. The advantage was all on Mr. Sayers' side. 
Say a young lad of sixteen insults me in the street, and I try 
and thrash him, and do it. Well, I have thrashed a young lad. 
You great, big tyrant, couldn't you hit one of your own size ? 
But say the lad thrashes me ? In either case I walk away dis- 
comfited : but in the latter, I am positively put to shame. Now, 
when the ropes were cut from that death-grip, and Sir Thomas 
released, the gentleman of Benicia was confessedly blind of 
one eye, and speedily afterwards was blind of both. Could 
Mr. Sayers have held out for three minutes, for five minutes, 
for ten minutes more ? He says he could. So we say we could 
have held out, and did, and had beaten off the enemy at 
Waterloo, even if the Prussians hadn't come up. The opinions 
differ pretty much according to the nature of the opinants. I 



32 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



say the Duke and Tom could have held out, that they meant 
to hold out, that they did hold out, and that there has been 
fistifying enough. That crowd which came in and stopped the 
fight ought to be considered like one of those divine clouds 
which the gods send in Homer : 

" Apollo shrouds 
The god-like Trojan in a veil of clouds." 

It is the best way of getting the god-like Trojan out of the 
scrape, don't you see ? The nodus is cut ; Tom is out of 
chancery \ the Benicia Boy not a bit the worse, nay, better than 
if he had beaten the little man. He has not the humiliation of 
conquest. He is greater, and will be loved more hereafter by 
the gentle sex. Suppose he had overcome the god-like Trojan ? 
Suppose he had tied Tom's corpse to his cab-wheels, and driven 
to Farnham, smoking the pipe of triumph ? Faugh ! the great 
hulking conqueror ! Why did you not hold your hand from 
yonder hero ? Everybody, I say, was relieved by that oppor- 
tune appearance of the British gods, protectors of native valor, 
who interfered, and " withdrew " their champion. 

Now, suppose six-feet-two conqueror, and five-feet-eight 
beaten ; Would Sayers have been a whit the less gallant and 
meritorious .'' If Sancho had been allowed really to reign in 
Barataria, I make no doubt that, with his good sense and kind- 
ness of heart, he would have devised some means of rewarding 
the brave vanquished, as well as the brave victors in the Bara- 
tarian army, and that a champion who had fought a good fight 
would have been a knight of King Don Sancho's orders, what- 
ever the upshot of the combat had been. Suppose Wellington 
overwhelmed on the plateau of Mont St. John ; suppose Wash- 
ington attacked and beaten at Valley Forge — and either sup- 
position is quite easy — and what becomes of the heroes ? They 
would have been as brave, honest, heroic, wise ; but their glory, 
where would it have been ? Should we have had their portraits 
hanging in our chambers ? have been familiar with their his- 
tories? have pondered over their letters, common lives, and 
daily sayings ? There is not only merit, but luck which goes 
to making a hero out of a gentleman. Mind, please you, I am 
not saying that the hero is after all not so very heroic ; and have 
not the least desire to grudge him his merit because of his good 
fortune. 

Have you any idea whither this Roundabout Essay on some 
recent great victories is tending? Do you suppose that by 
those words I mean Trenton, Brandywine, Salamanca, Vittoria, 



ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES. 33 

and so forth ? By a great victory I can't mean that affair at 
Farnham, for it was a drawn fight. Where, then, are the 
victories, pray, and when are we coming to them ? 

My good sir, you will perceive that in this Niceean discourse 
I have oiily as yet advanced as far as this — that a hero, whether 
he wins or loses, is a hero ; and that if a fellow will but be 
honest and courageous, and do his best, we are for paying all 
honor to him. Furthermore, it has been asserted that Fortune 
has a good deal to do with the making of heroes ; and thus 
hinted for the consolation of those who don't happen to be 
engaged in any stupendous victories, that, had opportunity so 
served, they might have been heroes too. If you are not, 
friend, it is not your fault, whilst I don't wish to detract from 
any gentleman's reputation who is. There. My worst enemy 
can't take objection to that. The point might have been put 
more briefly perhaps ; but, if you please, we will not argue that 
question. 

Well, then. The victories which I wish especially to com- 
memorate in this paper, are the six great, complete, prodigious, 
and undeniable victories, achieved by the corps which the 
editor of the Cornhill Magazine has the honor to command. 
When I seemed to speak disparagingly but now of generals, it 
was that chief I had in my I (if you will permit me the expres- 
sion). I wished him not to be elated by too much prosperity ; I 
warned him against assuming heroic imperatorial airs, and 
cocking his laurels too jauntily over his ear. I was his con- 
science, and stood on the splashboard of his triumph-car, 
whispering, " Homi7iem memento te." As we rolled along the 
way, and passed the weathercocks on the temples, I saluted 
the symbol of the goddess Fortune with a reverent awe. "We 
have done our little endeavor," I said, bowing my head, " and 
mortals can do no more. But we might have fought bravely, 
and not won. We might have cast the coin, calling ' Head,' 
and lo ! Tail might have come uppermost." O thou Ruler of 
Victories ! — thou Awarder of Fame ! — thou Giver of Crowns 
(and shillings) — if thou hast smiled upon us, shall we not be 
thankful ? There is a Saturnine philosopher, standing at the 
door of his book-shop, who, I fancy, has a pooh-pooh expres- 
sion as the triumph passes. (I can't see quite clearly for the 
laurels, which have fallen down over my nose.) One hand is 
reining in the two white elephants that draw the car ; I raise 
the other hand up to — to the laurels, and pass on, waving him a 
graceful recognition. Up the Hill of Ludgate — around the 
Pauline Square — by the side of Chepe — until it reaches our- 



34 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



own Hill of Corn — the procession passes. The Imperator is 
bowing to the people ; the captains of the legions are riding 
round the car, their gallant minds struck by the thought, " Have 
we not fought as well as yonder fellow, swaggering in the 
chariot, and are we not as good as he ? " Granted, with all my 
heart, my dear lads. When your consulship arrives, may you 
be as fortunate. When these hands, now growing old, shall 
lay down sword and truncheon, may you mount the car, and 
ride to the temple of Jupiter. Be yours the laurel then. iSfcgue 
me myrtus dedecet, looking cosily down from the arbor where I 
sit under the arched vine. 

I fancy the Imperator standing on the steps of the temple 
(erected by Titus) on the Mons Frumentarius, and addressing 
the citizens : " Quirites ! " he says, " in our campaign of six 
months we have been engaged six times, and in each action we 
have taken near upon a hundred thousand p?-isoners. Go to ! 
What are other magazines compared to our magazine ? (Sound, 
trumpeter ') What banner is there like that of Cornhill ? You, 
philosopher yonder ! " (he shirks under his mantle.) " Do you 
know what it is to have a hundred and ten thousand readers ? 
A hundred thousand readers ? a hundred thousand buyers ! " 
(Cries of " No ! "— " Pooh ! " " Yes, upon my honor ! " " Oh, 
come ! " and murmurs of applause and derision") — " I say more 
than a hundred thousand purchasers — and I bc'ieve as much as 
a 77iillwn readers ! " (Immense sensation.) " To these have 
we said an unkind word .'' We have enemies ; have we hit them 
an unkind blow ? Have we sought to pursue party aims, to 
forward private jobs, to advance selfish schemes ? The only 
persons to whom wittingly we have given pain are some who 
have volunteered for our corps — and of these volunteers we 
have had thousands." (Murmurs and grumbles.) " What com- 
mander, citizens, could place all these men — could make offi- 
cers of all these men ? " (cries of " No — no ! " and laughter) — 
" could say, ' I accept this recruit, though he is too short for 
our standard, because he is poor, and has a mother at home 
who wants bread ? ' could enroll this other, who is too weak to 
bear arms, because he says, ' Look, sir, I shall be stronger 
anon.' The leader of such an army as ours must select his 
men, not because they are good and virtuous, but because they 
are strong and capable. To these our ranks are ever open, and 
in addition to the warriors who surround me " — (the generals 
look proudly conscious) — " I tell you, citizens, that I am in 
treaty with other and most tremendous champions, who will 
inarch by the side of our veterans to the achievement of fresh 



THORNS IN THE CUSHION. ^e 

victories. Now, blow trumpets ! Bang, ye gongs ! and drum- 
mers, drub the thundering skins ! Generals and chiefs, we go 
to sacrifice to the gods." 

Crowned with flowers, the captains enter the temple, the 
other Magazines walking modestly behind them. The people 
huzza ; and, in some instances, kneel and kiss the fringes of 
the robes of the warriors. The Philosopher puts up his shut- 
ters, and retires into his shop, deeply moved. In ancient times, 
Pliny (aptid Smith) relates it was the custom of the Imperator 
" to paint his whole body a bright red ; " and, also, on ascend- 
ing the Hill, to have some of the hostile chiefs led aside " to 
the adjoining prison, and put to death." We propose to dis- 
pense with both these ceremonies. 



THORNS IN THE CUSHION 

In the Essay with which this volume commences, the Corn- 
hill Afagazine was likened to a ship sailing forth on her voyage, 
and the Captain uttered a very sincere prayer for her prosperity. 
The dangers of storm and rock, the vast outlay upon ship and 
cargo, and the certain risk of the venture, gave the chief officer 
a feeling of no small anxiety ; for who could say from what 
quarter danger might arise, and how his owner's property might 
be imperilled ? After a six months' voyage, we with very 
thankful hearts could acknowledge our good fortune : and tak- 
ing up the apologue in the Roundabout manner, we composed 
a triumphal procession in honor of the Magazine, and imagined 
the Imperator therefore riding in a sublime car to return thanks 
in the Temple of Victory. Cornhill is accustomed to grandeur 
and greatness, and has witnessed, every ninth of November, 
for I don't know how many centuries, a prodigious annual 
pageant, chariot, progress, and flourish of trumpetry ; and be- 
ing so very near the Mansion House, I am sure the reader will 
understand how the idea of pageant and procession came nat- 
urally to my mind. The imagination easily supplied a gold 
coach, eight cream-colored horses of your true Pegasus breed, 
huzzaing multitudes, running footmen, and clanking knights in 
armor, a chaplain and a sword-bearer with a muff on his head, 
scowling out of the coach-window, and a Lord Mayor all crimson, 
fur, gold-chain, and white ribbons, solemnly occupying the place 



36 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

of state. A playful fancy could have carried the matter farther, 
could have depicted the feast in the Egyptian Hall, the Minis- 
ters, Chief Justices, and right reverend prelates taking their seats 
round about his lordship, the turtle and other delicious viands, 
and Mr. Toole behind the central throne, bawling out to the 
assembled guests and dignitaries : " My lord So-and-so, my 
Lord What-d'ye-call-'im, my Lord Etcetera, the Lord Mayor 
pledges you all in a loving-cup." Then the noble proceedings 
come to an end ; Lord Simper proposes the ladies ; the com- 
pany rises from the table, and adjourns to coffee and muffins. 
The carriages of the nobility and guests roll back to the West. 
The Egyptian Hall, so bright just now, appears in a twilight 
glimmer, in which waiters are seen ransacking the dessert, and 
rescuing the spoons. His lordship and the lady Mayoress go 
into their private apartments. The robes are doffed, the collar 
and white ribbons are removed. The Mayor becomes a man, 
and is pretty surely in a fluster about the speeches which he has 
just uttered ; remembering too well now, wretched creature, 
the principal points which he didn't make when he rose to 
speak. He goes to bed to headache, to care, to repentance, 
and, I dare say, to a dose of something which his body-physician 
has prescribed for him. And there are ever so many men in 
the city who fancy that man happy ! 

Now, suppose that all through that 9th of November his 
lordship has had a racking rheumatism, or a toothache, let us 
say, during all dinner-time — through which he has been obliged 
to grin and mumble his poor old speeches. Is he enviable ? 
Would you like to change with his lordship ? Suppose that 
bumper which his golden footman brings him, instead i'fackins 
of ypocras or canary, contains some abomination of senna ? 
Away ! Remove the golden goblet, insidious cup-bearer ! You 
now begin to perceive the gloomy moral which I am about to 
draw. 

Last month we sang the song of glorification, and rode in 
the chariot of triumph. It was all very well. It was right to 
huzza, and be thankful, and cry, Bravo, our side ! and besides, 
you know, there was the enjoyment of thinking how pleased 
Brown and Jones, and Robinson (our dear friends)would be at 
this announcement of success. But now that the performance 
is over, my good sir, just step into my private room, and see 
that it is not all pleasure — this winning of successes. Cast your 
eye over those newspapers, over those letters. See what the 
critics say of your harmless jokes, neat little trim sentences, 
and pet waggeries ! Why, you are no better than an idiot ; 



THORNS IN THE CUSHION. 



37 



you are drivelling ; your powers have left you ; this always 
overrated writer is rapidly sinking to, &c. 

This is not pleasant ; but neither is this the point. It may 
be the critic is right, and the author wrong. It may be that the 
archbishop's sermon is not so fine as some of those discourses 
twenty years ago which used to delight the faithful in Granada. 
Or it may be (pleasing thought !) that the critic is a dullard, 
and does not understand what he is writing about. Everybody 
who has been to an exhibition has heard visitors discoursing 
about the pictures before their faces. One says, " This is very 
well ; " another says, " This is stuff and rubbish ; " another 
cries, " Bravo ! this is a masterpiece," and each has a right 
to his opinion. For example, one of the pictures I admired 
most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I 
never, to my knowledge, set eyes. This picture is No. 346, 
"Moses," by Mr. S. Solomon. I thought it had a great inten- 
tion, I thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly rep- 
resented, to my mind, the dark children of the Egyptian bond- 
age, and suggested the touching story. My newspaper says : 
" Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do 
not form a pleasing object ; " and so good-by, Mr. Solomon. 
Are not most of our babies so in life } and doesn't Mr. Robin- 
son consider Mr. Brown's cherub an ugly, squalling little brat ? 
So cheer up, Mr. S. S. It may be the critic who discoursed on 
your baby is a bad judge of babies. When Pharaoh's kind 
daughter found the child, and cherished and loved it, and took 
it home, and found a nurse for it, too, I dare say there were 
grim, brickdust-colored chamberlains, or some of the tough, old, 
meagre, yellow princes at court, who never had children them- 
selves, who cried out, " Faugh ! the horrid little squalling 
wretch ! " and knew he would never come to good ; and said, 
" Didn't I tell you so ? " when he assaulted the Egyptian. 

Never mind then, Mr. S. Solomon, I say, because a critic 
pooh-poohs your work of art — your Moses — your child — your 
foundling. Why, did not a wiseacre in Blackwood'' s Magazine 
lately fall foul of " Tom Jones ? " O hypercritic ! So, to be 
sure, did good old Mr. Richardson, who could write novels 
himself — but you and I, and Mr. Gibbon, my dear sir, agree in 
giving our respect, and wonder, and admiration, to the brave 
old master. 

In these last words I am supposing the respected reader to 
be endowed with a sense of humor, which he may or may not 
possess ; indeed, don't we know many an honest man who can 
no more comprehend a joke than he can turn a tune. But I 



38 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS, 

take for granted, my dear sir, that you are brimming over with 
fun — you mayn't make jokes, but you could if you would — ■ 
you know you could : and in your quiet way you enjoy them 
extremely. Now many people neither make them, nor under- 
stand them when made, nor like them when understood, and 
are suspicious, testy, and angry with jokers. Have you ever 
watched an elderly male or female — an elderly " party," so to 
speak, who begins to find out that some young wag of the com- 
pany is " chaffing " him .'' Have you ever tried the sarcastic or 
Socratic method with a child .-• Little simple he or she, in the 
innocence of the simple heart, plays some silly freak, or makes 
some absurd remark, which you turn to ridicule. The little 
creature dimly perceives that you are making fun of him, 
writhes, blushes, grows uneasy, bursts into tears, — upon my 
word it is not fair to try the weapon of ridicule upon that inno- 
cent young victim. The awful objurgatory practice he is ac- 
customed to. Point out his fault, and lay bare the dire con- 
sequences thereof : expose it roundly, and give him a proper, 
solemn, moral whipping — but do not attempt to castigare ridendo. 
Do not laugh at him writhing, and cause all the other boys in 
the school to laugh. Remember your own young days at 
school, my friend — the tingling cheeks, burning ears, bursting 
heart, and passion of desperate tears, with which you looked 
up, after having performed some blunder, whilst the doctor 
held you to public scorn before the class, and cracked his great 
clumsy jokes upon you — helpless, and a prisoner ! Better the 
block itself, and the lictors, with their fasces of birch-twigs, 
than the maddening torture of those jokes ! 

Now, with respect to jokes — and the present company of 
course excepted — many people, perhaps most people, are as 
infants. They have little sense of humor. They don't like 
jokes. Raillery in writing annoys and offends them. The 
coarseness apart, I think I have met very, very few women who 
liked the banter of Swift and Fielding. Their simple, tender 
natures revolt at laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked brute at 
heart, and are they rightly shocked at his grin, his leer, his 
horns, hoofs, and ears .'' Fi dofic, k vilai?i monstre, with his 
shrieks, and his capering crooked legs ? Let him go and get a 
pair of well-wadded black silk stockings, and pull them over 
those horrid shanks ; put a large gown and bands over beard 
and hide ; and pour a dozen of lavender-water into his lawn 
handkerchief, and cry, and never make a joke again. It shall 
all be highly distilled poesy, and perfumed sentiment, and 
gushing eloquence ; and the foot sha'n't peep out, and a plague 



THORNS IN THE CUSHION. 



39 



take it. Cover it up with the surplice. Out with your cambric, 
dear ladies, and let us all whimper together. 

Now, then, hand on heart, we declare that it is not the fire 
of adverse critics which afflicts or frightens the editorial bosom. 
They may be right ; they may be rogues who have a personal 
spite ; they may be dullards who kick and bray as their nature is 
to do, and prefer thistles to pineapples ; they may be conscien- 
tious, acute, deeply learned, delightful judges, who see your 
joke in a moment, and the profound wisdom lying underneath. 
Wise or dull, laudatory or otherwise, we put their opinions aside. 
If they applaud, we are pleased : if they shake their quick pens, 
and iiy off with a hiss, we resign their favors and put on all the 
fortitude we can muster. I would rather have the lowest man's 
good word than his bad one, to be sure ; but as for coaxing a 
compliment, or wheedling him into good-humor, or stopping his 
angry mouth with a good dinner, or accepting his contributions 
for a certain Magazine, for fear of his barking or snapping 
elsewhere — alloti doficf These shall not be our acts. Bow-wow, 
Cerberus ! Here shall be no sop for thee, unless — unless 
Cerberus is an uncommonly good dog, when we shall bear no 
malice because he flew at us from our neighbor's gate. 

What, then, is the main grief you spoke of as annoying you 
— the toothache in the Lord Mayor's jaw, the thorn in the 
cushion of the editorial chair ? It is there. Ah ! it stings me 
now as I write. It comes with almost every morning's post. 
At night I come home, and take my letters up to bed (not 
daring to open them), and in the morning I find one, two, three 
thorns on my pillow. Three I extracted yesterday ; two I found 
this morning. They don't sting quite so sharply as they did ; 
but a skin is a skin, and they bite, after all, most wickedly. It 
is all very fine to advertise on the Magazine, " Contributions 
are only to be sent to Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., and not 
to the Editor's private residence." My dear sir, how little you 
know man- or woman-kind, if you fancy they will take that sort 
of warning ! How am I to know, (though to be sure, I begin 
to know now,) as I take the letters off the tray, which of those 
envelopes contains a real bo7id fide letter, and which a thorn ? 
One of the best invitations this year I mistook for a thorn-letter, 
and kept it without opening. This is what I called a thorn- 
letter : — 

" Camberwell, June 4. 

" Sir, — May I hope, may I entreat, that you will favor me by perusing the enclosed lines, 
and that they may be found worthy of insertion in the Cornhill Alagazine. We have 
known better days, sir. I have a sick and widowed mother to maintaiuj and little brothers 



40 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



and sisters who look to me. I do my utmost as a governess to support them. I toil at night 
when they are at rest, and my own hand and brain are alike tired. If 1 could add but a 
little to our means by my pen, many of my poor invalid's wants might be supplied, and I 
could procure for her comforts to which she is now a stranger. Heaven knows it is not for 
want of will 01 for want oi energy on my part, that she is now in ill-health, and our little 
household almost without bread. Do — do cast a kind glance over my poem, and if you can 
help us, the widow, the orphans will bless you! I remain, sir, in anxious expectancy, 

" Your faithful servant, 

" S. S. S." 

And enclosed is a little poem or two, and an envelope with its 
penny stamp — heaven help us ! — and the writer's name and 
address. 

Now you see what I mean by a thorn. Here is the case put 
with true female logic. " I am poor ; I am good ; I am ill ; I 
work hard ; I have a sick mother and hungry brothers and 
sisters dependent on me. You can help us if you will." And 
t'len I look at the paper, with the thousandth part of a faint 
hope that it may be suitable, and I find it won't do ; and I 
knew it wouldn't do ; and why is this poor lady to appeal to my 
pity and bring her poor little ones kneeling to my bedside, and 
calling for bread which I can give them if I choose ? No day 
passes but that argument ad misericordiajn is used. Day and 
night that sad voice is crying out for help. Thrice it appealed 
to me yesterday. Twice this morning it cried to me : and I 
have no doubt when I go to get my hat, I shall find it with its 
piteous face and its pale family about it, waiting for me in the 
hall. One of the immense advantages which women have over 
our sex is, that they actually like to read these letters. Like 
letters ? O mercy on us ! Before I was an editor I did not 
like the postman much : — but now ! ■• 

A very common way with these petitioners is to begin with 
a fine flummery about the merits and eminent genius of the 
person whom they are addressing. But this artifice, I state 
publicly, is of no avail. When I see that kind of herb, I know 
the snake within it, and fling it away before it has time to 
sting. Away, reptile, to the waste-paper basket, and thence to 
the flames ! 

But of these disappointed people, some take their disap- 
pointment and meekly bear it. Some hate and hold you their 
enemy because you could not be their friend. Some, furious 
and envious, say : " Who is this man who refuses what I offer, 
and how dares he, the conceited coxcomb, to deny my merit ? " 

Sometimes my letters contain not mere thorns, but blud- 
geons. Here are two choice slips from that noble Irish oak, 
which has more than once supplied alpeens for this meek and 
unolfendins: skull : — 



THORNS IN THE CUSHION. 



41 



" Theatre Royal, Donnybrook. 

" S:k, — I have just finished reading the first portion of your Tale, Lovel the Widower, 
and am much surprised at the unwarrantable strictures you pass thereon on the corps de 
ballet. 

" I have been for more than ten years connected with the theatrical profession, and I 
beg to assure you that the majority of the corps de ballet are virtuous, well-conducted girls, 
and, consequently, that snug cottages are not taken for them in the Regent's Park. 

" I also have to inform you that theatrical managers are in the habit of speaking good 
English, possibly better English than authors. 

" You either know nothing of the subject in question, or you assert a wilful falsehood. 
" I am happy to say that the characters of the corps de ballet, as also those of actors and 
actresses, are superior to the snarlings of dyspeptic libellers, or the spiteful attacks and 
brutum jfuhnen of ephemeral authors. 

" I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
"The Editor cf the Cornhill Magazine. "A. B. C." 

" Theatre Royal, Donnybrook. 
" Sir, — I have just read in the Cornhill Magazifie for January, the first portion of a 
Tale written by you, and entitled Lovel the Widower. 

" In the production in question you employ all your malicious spite (and you have great 
capabilities that way) in trying to degrade the character of the corps de ballet. When you 
imply that the majority of ballet-girls have villas taken for them in the Regent's Park, 
1 say you tell a deliberate falsehood. 

Having been brought up to the stage from infancy, and, though nowan actress, having 
been seven years principal dancer at the opera, I am competent to speak on the subject. I 
am only surprised that so vile a libeller as yourself should be allowed to preside at the 
Dramatic Fund dinner on the 22d instant. I think it would be much better if you were to 
reform your own life, instead of telling lies of those who are immeasurably your superiors. 

" Yours in supreme disgust, 

"A. D." 

The signatures of the respected writers are altered, and for 
the site of their Theatre Royal an adjacent place is named 
which (as I may have been falsely informed) used to be famous 
for quarrels, thumps, and broken heads. But, I say, is this an 
easy chair to sit on, when you are liable to have a pair of such 
shillelaghs flung at it .-' And, prithee, what was all the quarrel 
about? In the little history of "Lovel the Widower" I de- 
scribed, and brought to condign punishment, a certain wretch 
of a ballet-dancer, who lived splendidly for a while on ill-gotten 
gains, had an accident, and lost her beauty, and died poor, 
deserted, ugly, and every way odious. In the same page, other 
little ballet-dancers are described, wearing homely clothing, 
doing their duty, and carrying their humble savings to the 
family at home. But nothing will content my clear correspon- 
dents but to have me declare that the majority of ballet-dancers 
have villas in the Regent's Park, and to convict me of " de- 
liberate falsehood." Suppose, for instance, I had chosen to 
introduce a red-haired washerwoman into a story ? I might get 
an expostulatory letter saying, " Sir, in stating that the majority 
of washerwomen are red-haired, you are a liar ! and you had 
best not speak of ladies who are immeasurably your superiors." 
Or suppose I had ventured to describe an illiterate haber- 
dasher ? One of the craft might write to me, " Sir, in describing 
haberdashers as illiterate, you utter a wilful falsehood. Haber- 



42 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

dashers use much better English than authors." It is a mis 
take, to be sure. I have never said what my correspondents 
say I say. There is the text under their noses, but what if 
they choose to read it their own way } " Hurroo lads ' Here's 
for a fight There's a bald head peeping out of 'the hut. 
Iheres a bald head! It must be Tim Malone's." And 
whack ! come down both the bludgeons at once. 

Ah me ! we wound where we never intended to strike ; we 
create anger where we never meant harm ; and these thoughts 
are the thorns in our Cushion. Out of mere malignity, I sup- 
pose, there is no man who would like to make enemies. But 
here, in this editorial business, you can't do otherwise : and a 
queer, sad, strange, bitter thought it is, that must cross the 
mind of many a public man : " Do what I will, be innocent or 
spiteful, be generous or cruel, there are A and B, and C and D, 
who will hate me to the end of the chapter— to the chapter's 
end— to the Finis of the page— when hate, and envy, and for- 
tune, and disappointment shall be over." 



ON SCREENS IN DINING-ROOMS. 

A GRANDSON of the late Rev. Dr. Primrose (of Wakefield, 
vicar) wrote me a little note from his country living this morn- 
ing, and the kind fellow had the precaution to write " No thorn " 
upon the envelope, so that, ere I broke the seal, my mind might 
be relieved of any anxiety lest the letter should contain one of 
those lurking stabs which are so painful to the present gentle 
writer. Your epigraph, my dear P., shows your kind and artless 
nature j but don't you see it is of no use 1 People who are 
bent upon assassinating you in the manner mentioned will 
write " No thorn " upon their envelopes too ; and you open 
the case, and presently out flies a poisoned stiletto, which 
springs into a man's bosom, and makes the wretch howl with 
anguish. When the bailiffs are after a man, they adopt all 
sorts of disguises, pop out on him from all conceivable corners, 
and tap his miserable shoulder. His wife is taken ill ; his 
sweetheart, who remarked his brilliant, too brilliant appearance 
at the Hyde Park review, will meet him at Cremorne, or where 
you will. The old friend who has owed him that money these 
five years will meet him at so-and-so and pay. By one bait or 



ON SCREENS IN DINING-ROOMS. 



43 



Other the victim is hooked, netted, landed, and down goes the 
basket-lid. It is not your wife, your sweetheart, your friend, 
who is going to pay you. It is Mr. Nab the bailiff. You 

know you are caught. You are off in a cab to Chancer}' 

Lane. 

You know, I say .'' Why should you know ? I make no 
manner of doubt you never were taken by a bailiff in your life. 

I never was. I have been in two or three debtors' prisons, 
but not on my own account. Goodness be praised ! I mean 
you can't escape your lot ; and Nab only stands here metaphor- 
ically as the watchful, certain, and untiring officer of Mr Sheriff 
Fate. Why, my dear Primrose, this morning along with your 
letter comes another, bearing the well-known superscription of 
another old friend, which I open without the least suspicion, 
and what do I find ? A few lines from my friend Johnson, it 
is true, but they are written on a page covered with feminine 
handwriting. " Dear Mr. Johnson," says the writer, " I have 
just been perusing with delight a most charming tale by the 
Archbishop of Cambray. It is called ' Telemachus ; ' and I 
think it would be admirably suited to the Corn/nil Magazine. 
As you know the Editor, will you have the great kindness, dear 
Mr. Johnson, to communicate with him personally (as that is 
much better than writing in a roundabout way to the Publishers', 
and waiting goodness knows how long for an answer), and state 
my readiness to translate this excellent and instructive story. 
I do not wish to breathe a word against ' Lovel Parsonage,' 
* Framley the Widower,' or any of the novels which have 
appeared in the Cornhill Magazifie, but I am sure ' Telemachus ' 
is as good as new to English readers, and in point of interest 
and morality, y^r," &c., &c., &c. 

There it is. I am stabbed through Johnson. He has lent 
himself to this attack on me. He is weak about women. Other 
strong men are. He submits to the common lot, poor fellow. 
In my reply I do not use a word of unkindness. I write him 
back gently, that I fear ' Telemachus ' won't suit us. He can 
send the letter on to his fair correspondent. But however soft 
the answer, I question whether the wrath will be turned away. 
Will there not be a coolness between him and the lady .? and is 
it not possible that henceforth her fine eyes will look with dark- 
ling glances upon the pretty orange cover of our Magazine ? 

Certain writers, they say, have a bad opinion of women. 
Now am I very whimsical in supposing that this disappointed 
candidate will be hurt at her rejection, and angry or cast down 
according to her nature ? " Angry, indeed ! " says Juno, gather- 



44 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



ing up her purple robes and royal raiment. " Sorry, indeed ! " 
cries Minerva, lacing on her corselet again, and scowling undei 
her helmet. (I imagine the well-known Apple case has just been 
argued and decided.) " Hurt, forsooth ! Do you suppose we 
care for the opinion of that hobnailed lout of a Paris ? Do you 
suppose that I, the Goddess of Wisdom, can't make allowances 
for mortal ignorance, and am so base as to bear malice against 
a poor creature who knows no better ? You little know the 
goddess nature when you dare to insinuate that our divine 
minds are actuated by motives so base. A love of justice in- 
fluences us. We are above mean revenge. We are too mag- 
nanimous to be angry at the award of such a judge in favor 
of such a creature." And rustling out their skirts, the ladies 
walk away together. This is all very well. You are bound to 
believe them. They are actuated by no hostility : not they. 
They bear no malice — of course not. But when the Trojan 
war occurs presently, which side will they take ? Many brave 
souls will be sent to Hades. Hector will perish. Poor old 
Priam's bald numskull will be cracked, and Troy town will 
burn, because Paris prefers golden-haired Venus to ox-eyed 
Juno and gray-eyed Minerva. 

The last Essay of this Roundabout Series, describing the 
grief and miseries of the editoral chair, was written, as the 
kind reader will acknowledge, in a mild and gentle, not in a 
warlike or satirical spirit. I showed how cudgels were applied \ 
but surely, the meek object of persecution hit no blows in 
return. The beating did not hurt much, and the person as- 
saulted could afford to keep his good-humor ; indeed, I ad- 
mired that brave though illogical little actress, of the T. R. 
D-bl-n, for her fiery vindication of her profession's honor. I 
assure her I had no intention to tell 1 — s — well, let us say, 
monosyllables — about my superiors : and I wish her nothing 
but well, and when Macmahon (or shall it be Mulligan ?) Rot 
d'Irlande ascends his throne, I hope she may be appointed pro- 
fessor of English to the princesses of the royal house. Nuper 
in former days — I too have militated ; sometimes, as I now 
think, unjustly ; but always, I vow, without personal rancor. 
Which of us has not idle words to recall, flippant jokes to re- 
gret ? Have you never committed an imprudence ? Have you 
never had a dispute, and found out that you were wrong } So 
much the worse for you. Woe be to the man qui croit toujours 
avoir raison. His anger is not a brief madness, but a permanent 
mania. His rage is not a fever-fit, but a black poison inflaming 
him, distorting his judgment, disturbing his rest, embittering his 



ON SCREENS TN DINING-ROOMS. 



45 



cup, gnawing at his pleasures, causing him more cruel suffering 
than ever he can inflict on the enemy. O la belle morale I As I 
write it, I think about one or two little affairs of my own. There 
is old Dr. Squaretoso (he certainly was very rude to me, and 
that's the fact) ; there is Madame Pomposa (and certainly her 
ladyship's behavior was about as cool as cool could be). Never 
mind, old Squaretoso : nevermind, IVfadame Pomposa! Here 
is a hand. Let us be friends, as we once were, and have no 
more of this rancor. 

I had hardly sent that last Roundabout Paper to the printer 
(which, I submit, was written in a peaceable and not unchristian 
frame of mind), when Saturday came, and with it, of course 
my Saturday Review. I remember at New York coming down 
to breakfast at the hotel one morning, after a criticism had ap- 
peared in the New York Herald^ in which an Irish writer had 
given me a dressing for a certain lecture on Swift. Ah ! my 
dear little enemy of the T. R. D., what were the cudgels in 
your little billet-doux compared to those noble New York shil- 
lelaghs ? All through the Union, the literary sons of Erin have 
marched alpeen-%\.oc^ in hand, and in every city of the States 
they call each other and everybody else the finest names. 
Having come to breakfast, then, in the public room, I sit down, 
and see — that the nine people opposite have all got New York 
Heralds in their hands. One dear little lady, whom I knew, 
and who sat opposite, gave a pretty blush, and popped her 
paper under the tablecloth. I told her I had my whipping 
already in my own private room, and begged her to continue 
her reading. I may have undergone agonies, you see, but 
every man who has been bred at an English public school 
comes away from a private interview with Dr. Birch with a calm, 
even a smiling face. And this is not impossible, when you are 
prepared. You screw your courage up — you go through the 
business. You come back and take your seat on the form, 
showing not the least symptom of uneasiness or of previous 
unpleasantries. But to be caught suddenly up, and whipped 
in the bosom of your family — to sit down to breakfast, and cast 
your innocent eye on a paper, and find, before you are aware, 
that the Saturday Monitor or Black Monday Instructor has 
hoisted you and is laying on — that is indeed a trial. Or per- 
haps the family has looked at the dreadful paper beforehand, 
and weakly tries to hide it. " Where is the Instructor, or the 
Monitor 1 " say you. " Where is that paper ? " says mamma 
to one of the young ladies. Lucy hasn't it. Fanny hasn't 
seen it. Emily thinks that the governess has it. At last, out 



46 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

it is brought, that awful paper ! Papa is amazingly tickled with 
the article on Thomson ; thinks that show up of Johnson is 
very lively ; and now — heaven be good to us ! — he has come to 
the critique on himself : — " Of all the rubbish which we have 
had from Mr. Tomkins, we do protest and vow that this last 
cartload is," &c. Ah, poor Tomkins ! — but most of all, ah ! poor 
Mrs. Tomkins, and poor Emily, and Fanny, and Lucy, who 
have to sit by and see paterfamilias put to the torture ! 

Now, on this eventful Saturday, I did not cry, because it was 
not so much the Editor as the Publisher of the Corrihill Magazine 
who was brought out for a dressing ; and it is wonderful how gal- 
lantly one bears the misfortunes of one's friends. That a writer 
should be taken to task about his books, is fair, and he must 
abide the praise or the censure. But that a publisher should 
be criticized for his dinners, and for the conversation which 
did not take place there, — is this tolerable press practice, 
legitimate joking, or honorable warfare ? I have not the honor 
to know my next-door neighbor, but I make no doubt that he 
receives his friends at dinner ; I see his wife and children pass 
constantly ; I even know the carriages of some of the people 
who call upon him, and could tell their names. Now, suppose 
his servants were to tell mine what the doings are next door, 
who comes to dinner, what is eaten and said, and I were to 
publish an account of these transactions in a newspaper, I 
could assuredly get money for the report ; but ought I to write 
it, and what would you think of me for doing so 'i 

And suppose, Mr. Saturday Reviewer — you censor morum, 
you who pique yourself (and justly and honorably in the main) 
upon your character of gentleman, as well as of writer, — sup- 
pose, not that you yourself invent and indite absurd twaddle 
about gentlemen's private meetings and transactions, but pick 
this wretched garbage out of a New York street, and hold it up 
for your readers' amusement — don't you think, my friend, that 
you might have been better employed ? Here, in my Saturday 
Reviezv, and in an American paper subsequently sent to me, 
I light, astonished, on an account of the dinners of my friend 
and publisher, which are described as " tremendously heavy," 
of the conversation (which does not take place), and of the 
guests assembled at the table. I am informed that the pro- 
prietor of the Cornhill, and the host on these occasions, is " a 
very good man, but totally unread ; " and that on my asking 
him whether Dr. Johnson was dining behind the screen, he 
said, " God bless my soul, my dear sir, there's no person by 
the name of Johnson here, nor any one behind the screen," 



ON SCREENS IN DTNING-RGOMS. 



47 



and that a roar of laughter cut him short. I am informed by 
the same New York correspondent that I have touched up 
a contributor's article ; that I once said to a literary gentle- 
man, who was proudly pointing to an anonymous article as his 
writing, " Ah ! I thought I recognized your hoof in it." 1 
am told by the same authority that the Cornhill Magazine 
" shows symptoms of being on the wane," and having sold 
nearly a hundred thousand copies, he (the correspondent) 
" should think forty thousand was now about the mark." Then 
the graceful writer passes on to the dinners, at which it appears 
the Editor of the Magazine " is the great gun, and comes out 
with all the geniality in his power." 

Now suppose this charming intelligence is untrue ? Suppose 
the publisher (to recall the words of my friend the Dublin actor 
of last month) is a gentleman to the full as well informed as 
those whom he invites to his table .'' Suppose he never made 
the remark, beginning — " God bless my soul, my dear sir," &c., 
nor anything resembling it .•* Suppose nobody roared with 
laughing.? Suppose the Editor of the Cornhill Magazine n^v^x 
"touched up " one single line of the contribution which bears 
"marks of his hand? " Suppose he never said to any literary 
gentleman, " I recognized your hoof" in any periodical what- 
ever ? Suppose the 40,000 subscribers, which the writer to 
New York " considered to be about the mark," should be 
between 90,000 and 100,000 (and as he will have figures, there 
they are) .? Suppose this back-door gossip should be utterly 
blundering and untrue, would any one wonder ? Ah ! if we 
we had only enjoyed the happiness to number this writer among 
the contributors to our Magazine, what a cheerfulness and easy 
confidence his presence would impart to our meetings I He 
would find that "poor Mr. Smith " had heard that recondite 
anecdote of Dr. Johnson behind the screen ; and as for " the 
great gim of those banquets," with what geniality should not 
I " come out " if I had an amiable companion close by me 
dotting down my conversation for the New York Times J 

Attack our books, Mr. Correspondent, and welcome. They 
are fair subjects for just censure or praise. But woe be to you, 
if you allow private rancors or animosities to influence you in the 
discharge of your public duty. In the little court where you are 
paid to sit as judge, as critic, you owe it to your employers, to 
your conscience, to the honor of your calling, to deliver just 
sentences ; and you shall have to answer to heaven for your 
dealings, as surely as my Lord Chief Justice on t'e Bench. 
The dignity of letters, the honor of the literary calling, the 



48 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

slights put by haughty and unthinking people upon literary 
men, — don't we hear outcries upon these subjects raised daily ? 
As dear Sam Johnson sits behind the screen, too proud to show 
his threadbare coat and patches among the more prosperous 
brethren of his trade, there is no want of dignity in hitn, in that 
homely image of labor ill-rewarded, genius as yet unrecognized, 
independence sturdy and uncomplaining. But Mr. Nameless, 
behind the publisher's screen uninvited, peering at the company 
and the meal, catching up scraps of the jokes, and noting down 
the guests' behavior and conversation, — what a figure his is ! 
Allans, Mr. Nameless ! Put up your notebook ; walk out of 
the hall ; and leave gentlemen alone who would be private, and 
wish you no harm. 



TUNBRIDGE TOYS. 



I wonder whether those little silver pencil-cases with a 
movable almanac at the butt-end are still favorite implements 
with boys, and whether pedlars still hawk them about the 
countr}' ? Are there pedlars and hawkers still, or are rustics 
and children grown too sharp to deal with them .? Those pencil- 
cases, as far as my memory serves me, were not of much use. 
The screw, upon which the movable almanac turned, was 
constantly getting loose. The i of the table would work from 
its moorings, under Tuesday or Wednesday, as the case might 
be, and you would find, on examination, that Th. or W. was 
the 23^ of the month (which was absurd on the face of the 
thing), and in a word your cherished pencil-case an utterly 
unreliable time-keeper. Nor was this a matter of wonder. 
Consider the position of a pencil-case in a boy's pocket. You 
had hard-bake in it ; marbles, kept in your purse when the 
money was all gone ; your mother's purse, knitted so fondly 
and supplied with a little bit of gold, long since — prodigal little 
son ! — scattered amongst the swine — I mean amongst brandy- 
balls, open tarts, three-cornered puffs, and similar abominations. 
You had a top and string ; a knife ; a piece of cobbler's wax ; 
two or three bullets; a Little Warbler; and I, for my part, 
remember, for a considerable period, a brass-barrelled pocket- 
pistol (which would fire beautifully, for with it I shot off a 



TUNBRIDGE TOYS. 49 

button from Butt Major's jacket) ; — with all these things, and 
ever so many more, clinking and rattling in your pockets, and 
your hands, of course, keeping them in perpetual movement, 
how could you expect your movable almanac not to be twisted 
out of its place now and again — your pencil-case to be bent — 
your liquorice water not to leak out of your bottle over the 
cobbler's wax, your bull's-eyes not to ram up the lock and barrel 
of your pistol, and so forth. 

In the month of June, thirty-seven years ago, I bought one 
of those pencil-cases from a boy whom I shall call Hawker, and 
who was in my form. Is he dead ? Is he a millionaire ? Is 
he a bankrupt now ? He was an immense screw at school, and 
I believe to this day that the value of the thing for which I 
owed and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was in reality not 
one-and-nine. 

I certainly enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and amused 
myself with twiddling round the movable calendar. But this 
pleasure wore off. The jewel, as I said, was not paid for, and 
Hawker, a large and violent boy, was exceedingly unpleasant 
as a creditor. His constant remark was, "When are you 
going to pay me that three-and-sixpence ? What sneaks your 
relations must be ? They come to see you. You go out to them 
on Saturdays and Sundays, and they never give you anything ! 
Don't tell me, you little humbug! " and so forth. The truth is 
that my relations were respectable ; but my parents were making 
a tour in Scotland ; and my friends in London, whom I used 
to go and see, were most kind to me, certainly, but somehow 
never tipped me. That term of May to August, 1S23, passed 
in agonies then, in consequence of my debt to Hawker. What 
was the pleasure of a calendar pencil-case in comparison with 
the doubt and torture of mind occasioned by the sense X)i the 
debt, and the constant reproach in that fellow's scowling eyes 
and gloomy, coarse reminders .'' How was I to pay off such a 
debt out of sixpence a week ? ludicrous ! Why did not some 
one come to see me, and tip me ? Ah ! my dear sir, \i you 
have any little friends at school, go and see them, and do the 
natural thing by them. You won't miss the sovereign. You 
don't know what a blessing it will be to them. Don't fancy 
they are too old — try 'em. And they will remember you, and 
bless you in future days ; and their gratitude shall accompany 
your dreary after life ; and they shall meet you kindly when 
thanks for kindness are scant. O mercy ! shall I ever forget 
that sovereign you gave me. Captain Bob ? or the agonies of 
being in debt to Hawker ? In that very term, a relation of 

4 



50 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



mine was going to India. I actually was fetched from school 
in order to take leave of him. I am afraid I told Hawker of 
this circumstance. I own I speculated upon my friend's giving 
me a pound. A pound ? Pooh ! A relation going to India, 
and deeply affected at parting from his darling kinsman, might 
give five pounds to the dear fellow ! * * * There was 
Hawker when I came back — of course there he was. As he 
looked in my scared face, his turned livid with rage. He mut- 
tered curses, terrible from the lips of so young a boy. My re- 
lation, about to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative appointment, 
asked me with much interest about my progress at school, 
heard me construe a passage of Eutropius, the pleasing Latin 
work on which I was then engaged ; gave me a God bless you, 
and sent me back to school ; upon my word of honor, without 
so much as a half-crown ! It is all very well, my dear sir, to 
say that boys contract habits of expecting tips from their 
parents' friends, that they become avaricious, and so forth. 
Avaricious ! fudge ! Boys contract habits of tart and toffee 
^eating, which they do not carry into after life. On the con- 
trary, I wish I did like 'em. What raptures of pleasure one 
could have now for five shillings, if one could but pick it off 
the pastrycook's tray ! No. If you have any little friends at 
school, out with your half-crowns, my friend, and impart to 
those little ones the fleeting joys of their age. 

Well, then. At the beginning of August, 1823, Bartlemy- 
tide holidays came, and I was to go to my parents, who were 
at Tunbridge Wells. My place in the coach was taken by my 
tutor's servants — " Bolt-in-Tun," Fleet Street, seven o'clock in 
the morning, was the word. My tutor, the Rev. Edward 

P , to whom I hereby present my best compliments, had a 

partin'g interview with me : gave me my little account for my 
governor: the remaining part of the coach-hire; five shillings 
for my own expenses ; and some five-and-twenty shillings on an 
' old account which had been overpaid, and was to be restored 
to my family. 

Away I ran and paid Hawker his three-and-six. Ouf ! 
what a weight it was off my mind ! (He was a Norfolk boy, 
and used to go home from Mrs. Nelson's "Bell Inn," Aldgate 
— but that is not to the point.) The next morning, of course, 
we were an hour before the time. I and another boy shared a 
hackney-coach; two-and-six : porter for putting luggage on 
•coach, threepence. I had no more money of my own left. 
Rasherwell,my companion, went into the " Bolt-in-Tun " coffee- 
iroom, and had a good breakfast. I couldn't; because, though 



TUNBRIDGE TOYS. 



51 



I had five-and-twenty shillings of my parents' money, I had 
none of my own, you see. 

I certainly intended to go without breakfast, and still re- 
member how strongly I had that resolution in my mind. But 
there was that hour to wait. A beautiful August morning — I 
am very hungry. There is Rasherwell " tucking " away in the 
coffee-room. I pace the street, as sadly almost as if I had been 
coming to school, not going thence. I turn into a court by 
mere chance — I vow it was by mere chance — and there I see a 
coffee-shop with a placard in the window, Coffee, Twopence. 
Round of buttered toast. Twopence. And here am I, hungry, 
penniless, with five-and-twenty shillings of my parents' money 
in my pocket. 

What would you have done ? You see I had had my 
money, and spent it in that pencil-case affair. The five-and- 
twenty shillings were a trust — by me to be handed over. 

But then would my parents wish their only child to be 
actually without breakfast .'' Having this money, and being so 
hungry, so very hungry, mightn't I take ever so little ? Mightn't 
I at home eat as much as I chose ? 

Well, I went into the coffee-shop, and spent fourpence. I 
remember the taste of the coffee and toast to this day — a pe- 
culiar, muddy, not-sweet-enough, most fragrant coffee — a rich, 
rancid, 3'et not-buttered enough, delicious toast. The waiter 
had nothing. At any rate, fourpence I know was the sum I 
spent. And the hunger appeased, I got on the coach a guilty 
being. 

At the last stage, — what is its name ? I have forgotten in 
seven-and-thirty years, — there is an inn with a little green and 
trees before it ; and by the trees there is an open carriage. It 
is our carriage. Yes, there are Prince and Blucher, the horses ; 
and my parents in the carriage. Oh ! how I had been count- 
ing the days until this one came ! Oh ! how happy had I been 
to see them yesterday ! But there was that fourpence. All the 
journey down the toast had choked me, and the coffee poisoned 
me. 

I was in such a state of remorse about the fourpence, that I 
forgot the maternal joy and caresses, the tender paternal voice. 
I pull out the twenty-four shillings and eightpence with a tremb- 
ling hand. 

"Here's your money," I gasp out, "which Mr. P owes 

you, all but fourpence. I owed three-and-sixpence to Hawker 
out of my money for a pencil-case, and I had none left, and I 
took fourpence of yours, and had some coffee at a shop." 



52 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

I suppose I must have been choking whilst uttering this 
confession. 

" My dear boy," says the governor, " why didn't you go and 
breakfast at the hotel ?"" 

" He must be starved," says my mother. 

I had confessed ; I had been a prodigal ; I had been taken 
back to my parents' arms again. It was not a very great crime 
as yet, or a very long career of prodigality ; but don't we know 
that a boy who takes a pin which is not his own, will take a 
thousand pounds when occasion serves, bring his parents' gray 
heads with sorrow to the grave, and carry his own to the gal- 
lows ? Witness the career of Dick Idle, upon whom our friend 
Mr. Sala has been discoursing. Dick only began by playing 
pitch-and-toss on a tombstone : playing fair, for what we know : 
and even for that sin he was promptly caned by the beadle. 
The bamboo was ineffectual to cane that reprobate's bad 
courses out of him. From pitch-and-toss he proceeded to man- 
slaughter if necessary : to highway robbery ; to Tyburn and the 
rope there. Ah ! heaven be thanked, my parents' heads are 
still above the grass, and mine still out of the noose. 

As I look up from my desk, I see Tunbridge Wells Common 
and the rocks, the strange familiar place which I remember 
forty years ago. Boys saunter over the green with stumps 
and cricket-bats. Other boys gallop by on the riding-master's 
hacks. I protest it is Cramps Kidiiii:^ Master, as it used to be 
in the reign of George IV., and that Centaur Cramp must be 
at least a hundred years old. Yonder comes a footman with a 
bundle of novels from the library. Are they as good as our 
novels? Oh! how delightful they were! Shades of Valan- 
cour, awful ghost of Manfroni, how I shudder at your appear- 
ance ! Sweet image of Thaddeus of Warsaw, how often has 
this almost infantile hand tried to depict you in a Polish cap 
and richly embroidered tights ! And as for Corinthian Tom in 
light blue pantaloons and Hessians, and Jerry Hawthorn from 
tlie country, can all the fashion, can all the splendor of real 
life which these eyes have subsequently beheld, can all the wit 
I have heard or read in later times, compare with your fashion, 
with your brilliancy, with your delightful grace, and sparkling 
vivacious rattle ? 

Who knows ? They mixy have kept those very books at ' 
the library still — at the well-remembered library on the Pan- 
tiles, where they sell that delightful, useful Tunbridge ware. I 
will go and see. I went my way to the Pantiles, the queer 
little old-world Pantiles, where a hundred years since, so much 



TUNB RIDGE TOYS. 



53 



good company came to take its pleasure. Is it possible, that 
in the past century, gentlefolks of the first rank (as I read 
lately in a lecture on George II. in the Cornhill Magazine) as- 
sembled here and entertained each other with gaming, dancing, 
fiddling, and tea ? There are fiddlers, harpers, and trumpeters 
performing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but. 
where is the fine company.? Where are the earls, duchesses, 
bishops, and magnificent embroidered gamesters ? A half- 
dozen of children and their nurses are listening to the musi- 
cians ; an old lady or two in a poke bonnet passes, and for the 
rest, I see but an uninteresting population of native tradesmen. 
As for the library, its window is full of pictures of burly theolo- 
gians, and their works, sermons, apologues, and so forth. Can 
I go in and ask the young ladies at the counter for '• Manfroni, 
or the One-Handed Monk," and " Life in London, or the Ad- 
ventures of Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, Esq., and 
their friend Bob Logic ? " — absurd. I turn away abashed from 
the casement — from the Pantiles — no longer Pantiles, but 
Parade. I stroll over the Common and survey the beautiful 
purple hills around, twinkling with a thousand bright villas, 
which have sprung up over this charming ground since first I 
saw it. What an admirable scene of peace and plenty! What 
a delicious air breathes over the heath, blows the cloud 
shadows across it, and murmurs through the full clad trees ! 
Can the world show a land fairer, richer, more cheerful .-' I 
see a portion of it when I look up from the window at which I 
write. But fair scene, green woods, bright terraces gleaming 
in sunshine, and purple clouds swollen with summer rain — nay, 
the very pages over which my head bends — disappear from be- 
fore my eyes. They are looking backwards, back into forty 
years off, into a dark room, into a little house hard by on the 
Common here, in the Bartlemy-tide holidays. The parents 
have gone to town for two days : the house is all his own and 
a grim old maidservant's, and a little boy is seated at night in 
the lonely drawing-room, poring over " Manfroni, or the One- 
Handed Monk," so frightened that he scarcely dares to turn 
round. 



54 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



DE yUVENTUTE. 



Our last paper of this veracious and roundabout series re- 
lated to a period which can only be historical to a great number 
of readers of this Magazine. Four I saw at the station to-day 
with orange-covered books in their hands, who can but have 
known George IV. by books, and statues, and pictures. Elderly 
gentlemen were in their prime, old men in their middle age, 
when he reigned over us. His image remains on coins ; on a 
picture or two hanging here and there in a Club or old-fash- 
ioned dining-room ; on horseback, as at Trafalgar Square, for 
example, where I defy any monarch to look more uncomfortable. 
He turns up in sundry memoirs and histories which have been 
published of late days ; in Mr. Massey's " History ; " in the 
*' Buckingham and Grenville Correspondence : " and gentle- 
men who have accused a certain writer of disloyalty are re- 
ferred to those volumes to see whether the picture drawn of 
George is overcharged. Charon has paddled him off ; he has 
mingled with the crowded republic of the dead. His effigy 
smiles from a canvass or two. Breechless he bestrides his 
steed in Trafalgar Square. I believe he still wears his robes 
at Madame Tussaud's (Madame herself having quitted Baker 
Street and life, and found him she modelled t'other side the 
Stygian stream). On the head of a five-shilling piece we still 
occasionally come upon him, with St. George, the dragon- 
slayer, on the other side of the coin. Ah me ! did this George 
slay many dragons ? Was he a brave, heroic champion, and 
rescuer of virgins ? Well ! well ! have you and I overcome all 
the dragons that assail us? come alive and victorious out of all 
the caverns which we have entered in life, and succored, at 
risk of life and'limb, all poor distressed persons in whose naked 
limbs the dragon Poverty is about to fasten his fangs, whom 
the dragon Crime is poisoning with his horrible breath, and 
about to crunch up and devour ? O my royal liege ! O my 
gracious prince and warrior ! Vo7( a champion to fight that 
monster ? Your feeble spear ever pierce that slimy paunch or 
plated back .-• See how the flames come gurgling out of his 
red-hot brazen throat ! What a roar ! Nearer and nearer he 
trails, with eyes flaming like the lamps of a railroad engine. 
How he squeals, rushing out through the darkness of his tun- 
nel ! Now he is near. Now he is /leu. And now — what ? — - 



DE JUFENTUTE. 55 

lance, shield, knight, feathers, horse and all ? O horror, hor- 
ror ! Next day, round the monster's cave, there lie a few bones 
more. You, who wish to keep yours in your skins, be thankful 
that you are not called upon to go out and fight dragons. Be 
grateful that they don't sally out and swallow you. Keep a 
wise distance from their caves, lest you pay too clearly for 
approaching them. Remember that years passed, and whole 
districts were ravaged, before the warrior came who was able 
to cope with the devouring monster. When that knight does 
make his appearance, with all my heart let us go out and wel- 
come him with our best songs, huzzas, and laurel wreaths, and 
eagerly recognize his valor and victory. But he comes only 
seldom. Countless knights were slain before St. George won 
the battle. In the battle of life are we all going to try for the 
honors of championship ? If we can do our duty, if we can 
keep our place pretty honorably through the combat, let us 
say, Laus Deo ! at the end of it, as the firing ceases, and the 
night falls over the field. 

The old were middle-aged, the elderly were in their prime, 
then, thirty years since, when yon royal George was still fight- 
ing the dragon. As for you, my pretty lass, with your saucy hat 
and golden tresses tumbled in your net, and you, my spruce 
young gentleman in your mandarin's cap (the young folks at the 
country-place where I am staying are so attired), your parents 
were unknown to each other, and wore short frocks and short 
jackets, at the date of this five-shilling piece. Only to-day I 
met a dog-cart crammed with children^children with mus- 
taches and mandarin caps — children with saucy hats and hair- 
nets — children in short frocks and knickerbockers (surely the 
prettiest boy's dress that has appeared these hundred years) — • 
children from twenty years of age to six ; and father, with 
mother by his side, driving in front — and on father's counten- 
ance I saw that very laugh which I remember perfectly in the 
time when this crown-piece was coined — in his time, in King 
George's time, when we were school-boys seated on the same 
form. The smile was just as broad, as bright, as jolly, as I re- 
member it in the past — unforgotten, though not seen or thought 
of, for how many decades of years, and quite and instantly fam- 
iliar, though so long out of sight. 

Any contemporary of that coin who takes it up and reads 
the inscription round the laurelled head, " Georgius IV. Britan- 
niarum Rex. Fid: Def. 1823," if he will but look steadily enough 
at the round, and utter the proper incantation. I dare say may 
conjure back his life there. Look well, my elderly friend, and 



56 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

tell me what you see ? First, I see a Sultan, with hair, beauti- 
ful hair, and a crown of laurels round his head, and his name is 
Georgius Rex. Fid. Def., and so on. Now the Sultan has dis- 
appeared ; and what is that I see .'' A boy, — a boy in a jacket. 
He is at a desk ; he has great books before him, Latin and 
Greek books and dictionaries. Yet, but behind the great books, 
which he pretends to read, is a little one, with pictures, which 
he is really reading. It is — yes, I can read now — it is the 
*' Heart of Mid Lothian," by the author of " Waverley " — or, 
no, it is " Life in London, or the adventures of Corinthian Tom, 
Jeremiah Hawthorn, and their friend Bob Logic," by Pierce 
Egan ; and it has pictures — oh, such funny pictures ! As he 
reads, there comes behind the boy, a man, a dervish, in a black 
gown, like a woman, and a black square cap, and he has a book 
in each hand, and he seizes the boy who is reading the picture- 
book, and lays his head upon one of his books, and smacks it 
with the other. The boy makes faces, and so that picture dis- 
appears. 

Now the boy has grown bigger. He has got on a black 
gown and cap, something like the dervish. He is at a table, 
with ever so many bottles on it, and fruit, and tobacco ; and 
other young dervishes come in. They seem as if they were 
singing. To them enters an old moollah, he takes down their 
names, and orders them all to go to bed. What is this .'' a car- 
riage, with four beautiful horses all galloping — a man in red is 
blowing a trumpet. Many young men are on the carriage — 
one of them is driving the horses. Surely they won't drive into 

that ? ah ! they have all disappeared. And now I see one 

of the young men alone. He is walking in a street — a dark 
street — presently a light comes to a window. There is the 
shadow of a lady who passes. He stands there till the light 
goes out. Now he is in a room scribbling on a piece of paper, 
and kissing a miniature every now and then. They seem to be 
lines each pretty much of a length. I can read heart, S7nart, 
dart ; Mary, fairy ; Cupid, stupid ; true, you ; and never mind 
what more. Bah ! it is bosh. Now see, he has got a gown on 
again, and a wig of white hair on his head, and he is sitting 
with otiier dervishes in a great room full of them, and on a 
throne in the middle is an old Sultan in scarlet, sitting before a 
desk, and he wears a wig too — and the young man gets up and 
speaks to him. And now what is here ? He is in a room with 
ever so many children, and the miniature hanging up. Can it 
be a likeness of that woman who is sitting before that, copper 
urn, with a silver vase in her hand, from which she is pouring 



DE yUVENTUTE. 57 

hot liquor into cups ? Was she ever a fairy ? She is as fat as 
a hippopotamus now. He is sitting on a divan by the fire. He 
has a paper on his knees. Read the name of the paper. It is 
the Snpet'Jine Rcvieiv. It inclines to think that Mr. Dickens is 
not a true gentleman, that Mr. Thackeray is not a true gentle- 
man, and that when the one is pert and the other is arch, we, 
the gentlemen of the Superfine Revieiv^ think, and think rightly, 
that we have some cause to be indignant. The great cause 
why modern humor and modern sentimentalism repel us, is that 
they are unwarrantably familiar. Now, Mr. Sterne, the Super- 
fine Reviewer thinks, " was a true sentimentalist, because he 
was above all things a true gentleman." The flattering inference 
is obvious : let us be thankful for having an elegant moralist 
watching over us, and learn, if not too old, to imitate his high- 
bred politeness and catch his unobtrusive grace. If we are 
unwarrantably familiar, we know who is not. If we repel by 
pertness, wa know who never does. If our language offends, 
we know whose is always modest. O pity 1 The vision has 
disappeared off the silver, the images of youth and the past are 
vanishing away ! We who have lived before railways were 
made, belong to another world. In how many hours could the 
Prince of Wales drive from Brighton to London, with a light 
carriage built expressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop 
the next stage ? Do you remember Sir Somebody, the coach- 
man of the Age, who took our half-crown so affably ? It was 
only yesterday ; but what a gulf between now and then'! Then 
was the old world. Stage coaches, more or less swift, riding- 
horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman 
invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, 
and so forth— all these belong to the old period. I will con- 
cede a halt in the midst of it. and allow that gunpowder and 
printing tended to modernize the world. But your railroad 
starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new 
time and the old one. We are of the time of chivalry as well 
as the Black Prince or Sir Walter Manny. We are of the age 
of steam. We have stepped out of the old world on to " Bru- 
nei's " vast deck, and across the waters ingcns patet telliis. 
Towards what new continent are we wending ? to what new 
laws, new manners, new politics, vast new expanses of liberties 
unknown as yet, or only surmised } I used to know a man who 
had invented a flying-machine. " Sir," he would say, "give me 
but five hundred pounds, and I will make it. It is so simple of 
construction that I tremble daily lest some other person should 
light upon and patent my discovery." Perhaps faith was want- 



58 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



ing ; perhaps the five hundred pounds. He is dead, and some- 
body else must make the flying-machine. But that will only be 
a step forward on the journey already begun since we quitted 
the old world. There it lies on the other side of yonder em- 
bankments. You young folks have never seen it ; and Waterloo 
is to you no more than Agincourt, and George IV. than Sar- 
danapalus. We elderly people have lived in that pra3-railroad 
world, which has passed into limbo and vanished from under us. 
I tell you it was firm under our feet once, and not long ago. 
They have raised those railroad embankments up, and shut off 
the old world that was behind them. Climb up that bank on 
which the irons are laid, and look to the other side — it is gone. 
There is no other side. Try and catch yesterday. Where is 
it ? Here is a Times newspaper, dated Monday 26th, and this 
is Tuesday 27th. Suppose you deny there was such a day as 
yesterday ? 

We who lived before railways, and survive out of the an- 
cient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the ark. 
The children will gather round and say to us patriarchs, "Tell 
us, grandpapa, about the old world." And we shall mumble 
our old stories ; and we shall drop off one by one ; and there 
will be fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble. 
There will be but ten prae-railroadites left : then three — then 
two — then one — then o ! If the hippopotamus had the least 
sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide 
or his face); I think he would go down to the bottom of his 
tank, and never come up again. Does he not see that he be- 
longs to bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a 
body is out of place in these times ? What has he in common 
with the brisk young life surrounding him ? In the watches of 
the night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on 
one leg, when even the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys 
have ceased their chatter, — he, I mean the hippopotamus, and 
the elephant, and the long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay 
their heads together and have a colloquy about the great silent 
antediluvian world which they remember, where mighty mon- 
sters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked on the 
banks, and dragons darted out of the caves and waters before 
men were made to slay them. We who lived before railways 
are antediluvians — we must pass away. We are growing scarcer 
every day ; and old — old — very old relicts of the times when 
George was still fighting the Dragon. 

Not long since, a company of horse-riders paid a visit to 
our watering-place. We went to see them, and I bethought 



DE JUVENTUTE. 59 

me that young Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might 
like also to witness the performance, A pantomime is not 
always amusing to persons who have attained a certain age ; 
but a boy at a pantomime is always amused and amusing, and 
to see his pleasure is good for most hypochondriacs. 

We sent to Walter's mother, requesting that he might join 
us, and the kind lady replied that the boy had already been at 
the morning performance of the equestrians, but was most 
eager to go in the evening likewise. And go he did ; and 
laughed at all Mr. Merryman's remarks, though he remembered 
them with remarkable accuracy and insisted upon waiting to 
the very end of the fun, and was only induced to retire just 
before its conclusion by representations that the ladies of the 
party would be incommoded if they were to wait and undergo 
the rush and trample of the crowd round about. When this 
fact was pointed out to him, he yielded at once, though with a 
heavy heart, his eyes looking longingly towards the ring as we 
retreated out of the booth. We were scarcely clear of the 
place, when we heard " God save the Queen," played by the 
equestrian band, the signal that all was over. Our companion 
entertained us with scraps of the dialogue on our way home — ■ 
precious crumbs of wit which he had brought away from that 
feast. He laughed over them again as we walked under the 
stars. He has them now, and takes them out of the pocket 
of his memory, and crunches a bit, and relishes it with a senti- 
mental tenderness, too, for he is, no doubt, back at school by 
this time ; the holidays are over ; and Doctor Birch's young 
friends have reassembled. 

Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths to grin ! 
As the jaded Merryman uttered them to the old gentleman 
with the whip, some of the old folks in the audience, I dare say, 
indulged in reflections of their own. There was one joke — I 
utterly forget it — but it began with Merryman saying what he 
had for dinner. He had mutton for dinner, at one o'clock, 
after which " he had to come to business" And then came the 
point. Walter Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor Birch's, Market 
Rodborough, if you read this, will you please send me a line, 
and let me know what was the joke Mr. Merryman made about 
having his dinner ? You remember well enough. But do I 
want to know? Suppose a boy takes a favorite, long-cherished 
lump of cake out of his pocket, and offer you a bite ? Merci! 
The fact is I don't care much about knowing that joke of Mr. 
Merryman's. 

But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton, 



6o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

and his landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about 
Mr. M. in private life — about his wife, lodgings, earnings, and 
general history, and I dare say was forming a picture of those 
in my mind : — wife cooking the mutton ; children waiting for 
it ; Merryman in his plain clothes, and so forth ; during which 
contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed at, and Mr. 
M., resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over head 
and heels. Do not suppose I am going sicut est mos, to indulge 
in moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking. 
Nay, Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes; Opposition leaders 
prepare and polish them ; Tabernacle preachers must arrange 
them in their minds before they utter them. All I mean is, 
that I would like to know any one of these performers thoroughly 
and out of his uniform : that preacher, and why in his travels 
this and that points truck him ; wherein lies his power of pathos, 
humor, eloquence ; — that Minister of State, and what moves 
him, and how his private heart is working ; — I would only say 
that, at a certain time of life certain things cease to interest : 
but about some things when we cease to care, what will be the use 
of life, sight, hearing ? Poems are written, and we cease to 
admire. Lady Jones invites us, and we yawn ; she ceases to 
invite us, and we are resigned. The last time I saw a ballet at 
the opera — oh ! it is many years ago — I fell asleep in the stalls, 
wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording 
amusement to the compan)^, while the feet of five hundred 
nymphs were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces' 
distance. Ah, I remember a different state of things ! Credite 
posteri. To see those nymphs — gracious powers, how beautiful 
they were ! That leering, pamted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick- 
ankled old thing, cutting dreary capers, coming thumping down 
on her board out of time — tJiat an opera-dancer ? Pooh ! My 
dear Walter, the great difference between my time and yours, 
who will enter life some two or three years hence, is that now 
the dancing women and singing women are ludicrously old, out 
of time, and out of tune ; the paint is so visible, and the dinge 
and wrinkles of their wretched old cotton stockings, that I am 
•surprised how anybody can like to look at them. And as for 
laughing at me for falling asleep, I can't understand a man of 
sense doing otherwise. In my time, c^ la bonne heiire. In the 
reign of George IV., I give )^ou my honor, all the dancers at 
the opera were as beautiful as Houris. Even in William IV.'s 
time, when I think of Duvernay prancing in as the Bayadere, — 
I say it was a vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can't see 
novr-a-days. How well I remember the tune to which she used 



DE yUVENTUTE. 6 1 

to appear ! Kaled used to say to the Sultan, " My lord, a troop 
of those dancing and singing gurls called Bayaderes ap- 
proaches," and, to the clash of symbals, and the thumping of 
my heart, in she used to dance ! There has never been anything 
like it — never. There never will be — I laugh to scorn old 
people who tell me about your Noblet, your Montessu, your 
Vestris, your Parisot — pshaw, the senile twaddlers ! And the 
impudence of the young men, with their music and their dancers 
of to-day ! I tell you the women are dreary old creatures. I 
tell you one air in an opera is just like another, and they send 
all rational creatures to sleep. Ah, Ronzi de Begnis, thou 
lovely one ! Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel ! Ah, Malibran ! 
Nay, I will come to modern times, and acknowledge thatLablache 
was a very good singer thirty years ago (though Porto was the 
boy for me) : and then we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and 
Donzelli, a rising young singer. 

But what is more certain and lamentable is die decay of 
stage beauty since the days of George IV. Think of Sontag ! 
I remember her in Othello and the Donna del La^o in '28. I 
remember bein^; behind the scenes at the opera (where numbers 
of us young fellows of fashion used to go), and seeing Sontag 
let her hair fall down over her shoulder previous to her murder 
by Donzelli. Young fellows have never seen beauty like that^ 
heard such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes. Don't tell me ! 
A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., 
ought he not to know better than you young lads who have 
seen nothing ? The deterioration of women is lamentable ; and 
the conceit of the young fellows more lamentable still, that they 
won't see this fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as 
ours. 

Bless me ! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with 
angels, who sang, acted, and danced. When I remember the 
Adelphi, and the actresses there : when I think of Miss Ches- 
ter, and Miss Love, and Mrs. Serle at Sadler's Wells, and her 
forty glorious pupils — of the Opera and Noblet, and the ex- 
quisite young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more ! 
One much-admired being of those days I confess I never cared 
for, and that was the chief male dancer — a very important per- 
sonage then, with a bare neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat 
and feathers, who used to divide the applause with the ladies, 
and who has now sunk down a trap-door for ever. And this 
frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twad- 
dling laudator temporis acti — your old fogey who can see no 
good except in his own time. 



62 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much 
improved since the days of my monarch — of George IV. Fas- 
try Cookery is certainly not so good. I have often eaten half-a- 
crown's worth (including, I trust, ginger-beer) at our school 
pastrycook's, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been 
very good, for could I do as much now ? I passed by the pas- 
trycook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school. 
It looked a very clingy old baker's ; misfortunes may have come 
over him — those penny tarts certainly did 7iot look so nice as I 
remember them : but he may have grown careless as he has 
grown old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six 
years of age), and his hand may have lost its cunning. 

Not that we were not great epicures. I remember how we 
constantly grumbled at the quantity of the food in our master's 
house — which on my conscience I believe was excellent and 
plentiful — and how we tried once or twice to eat him out of 
house and home. At the pastrycook's we may have over-eaten 
ourselves (I have admitted half-a-crown's worth for my own 
part, but I don't like to mention the real figure for fear of per- 
verting the present generation of boys by my ov/n monstrous 
confession) — we may have eaten too much, I say. We did ; 
but what then ? The school apothecary was sent for : a couple 
of small globules at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the 
morning, and we had not to go to school, so that the draught 
was an actual pleasure. 

For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which 
were pretty much in old times as they are now (except cricket, 
par exeinplc — and I wish the present youth joy of their bowling, 
and suppose Armstrong and Whitworth will bowl at them with 
light field-pieces next), there were novels — ah ! I trouble you to 
find such novels in the present day ! O Scottish Chiefs, didn't 
we weep over you! O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn't I and 
Briggs Minor draw pictures out of you, as I have said .'' Efforts, 
feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us and our friends. 
** I say, old Boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition," 
or, " Draw us Don Quixote and the windmills, you know," 
amateurs would say, to boys, who had love of drawing. " Pere- 
grine Pickle " we liked, our fathers admiring it, and telling us 
(the sly old boys) it was capital fun ; but I think I was rather 
bewildered by it, though " Roderick Random " was and remains 
delightful. I don't remember having Sterne in the school 
library, no doubt because the works of that divine were not 
considered decent for young people. Ah ! not against thy 
genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I say a word 



DE JUVENTUTE. 



63 



ifn disrespect. But I am thankful to live in times when men no 
longer have the temptation to write so as to call blushes on 
women's cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked allusions 




to honest boys. Then, above all, we had Walter Scott, the 
kindl}', the generous, the pure — the companion of what countless 
delightful hours ; and purveyor of how much happiness ; the 
friend whom we recall as the constant benefactor of our youth ! 
How well 1 remember the type and the brownish paper of the 



64 ROUNDABOUT PACERS. 

old duodecimo "Tales of My Landlord ! " I have never dared 
to read the "Pirate," and the "Bride of Lammermoor," or 
" Kenihvorth," from that day to this, because the final is un- 
happy, and people die, and are murdered at the end. But 
" Ivanhoe," and " Quentin Durward ! " Oh ! for a half-holiday, 
and a quiet ccrner, and one of those books again ! Those 
books, and perhaps those eyes with which we read them ; and, it 
may be, the brains behind the eyes ! It may be the tart was good ; 
but how fresh the appetite was ! If the gods would give me 
the desire of my heart, I should be able to write a story which 
boys would relish for the next few dozen of centuries. The 
boy-critic loves the story : grown up, he loves the author who 
wrote the story. Hence the kindly tie is established between 
writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly for life. I meet 
people now who don't care for Walter Scott, or the " Arabian 
Nights." I am sorry for them, unless they in their time have 
found Mr/z-romancer — their charming Scherazade. By the way, 
Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the favorite novelist 
in the fourth form now ? Have you got anything so good and 
kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth's Fraiik ? It used to belong to 
a fellow's sisters generally ; but though he pretended to despise 
it, and said, " Oh, stuff for girls ! " he read it ; and I think 
there were one or two passages which would try my eyes now, 
were I to meet with the little book. 

As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of 
calling Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other 
day on purpose to get it ; but somehow, if you will press the 
question so closely, on reperusal, Tom and Jerry is not so 
brilliant as I had supposed it to be. The pictures are just as 
fine as ever ; and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry Haw- 
thorn and Corintliian Tom with delight, after many years' 
absence. But the style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing 
to me ; I even thought it a little vulgar — well ! well ! other 
writers have been considered vulgar — and as a description of 
the sports and amusements of London in the ancient times, 
more curious than amusing. 

But the pictures ! — oh ! the pictures are noble still ! First, 
there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and 
leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at 
Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor. Then away for 
the career of pleasure and fashion. The park ! delicious ex- 
citement ! The theatre ! the saloon ! ! the green-room ! ! ! Rap- 
turous bliss — the opera itself ! and then perhaps to Temple 
Bar, to knock down a Charley there ! There are Jerry and 



DE yUVENTUTE. 65 

Tom, with their tights and little cocked hats, coming from the 
opera — very much as gentlemen in waiting on royalty are 
habited now. There they are at Almack's itself, amidst a 
crowd of high-bred personages, with the Duke of Clarence 
himself looking at them dancing. Now, strange change, they 
are in Tom Cribb's parlour, where they don't seem to be a 
whit less at homiC than in fashion's gilded halls : and now they 
are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the malefactors' 
legs previous to execution. What hardened ferocity in the 
countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches ! What com- 
punction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I suppose, 
has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens to the 
chaplain ! Now we haste away to merrier scenes : to Tatter- 
sail's (ah gracious powers ! what a funny fellow that actor was 
who performed Dicky Green in that scene at the play !) ; and 
now we are at a private party, at which Corinthian Tom is 
waltzing (and very gracefully, too, as you must confess), with 
Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is playing on 
the piano ! 

"After," the text says, '■'' the Oxonian had played several 
pieces of lively music, he requested as a favor that Kate and 
his friend Tom would perform a waltz. Kate without any hesi- 
tation immediately stood up. Tom offered his hand to his 
fascinating partner, and the dance took place. The plate 
conveys a correct representation of the ' gay scene ' at that 
precise moment. The anxiety of the Oxonian to witness the 
attitudes of the elegant pair had. nearly put a stop to their 
movements. On turning round from the pianofore and pre- 
senting his comical mug, Kate could scarcely suppress a 
laugh." 

And no wonder ; just look at it now (as I have copied it to 
the best of my humble ability), and compare Master Logic's 
countenance and attitude with the splendid elegance of Tom ! 
Now every London man is weary and blase. There is an en- 
enjoyment of life in these young bucks of 1823 which contrasts 
strangely with our feelings of i860. Here, for instance, is a 
specimen of their talk and walk. '" If,' says Logic — ' if enjoy' 
vient is your motto, you may make the most of an evening at 
Vauxhall, more than at any other place in the metropolis. It 
is all free and easy. Stay as long as you like, and depart 
when you think proper.' — ' Your description is so flattering,' 
replied Jerry, 'that I do not care how soon the time arrives 
for us to start.' Logic proposed a ^ bit of a stroll' in order to 
get rid of an hour or two, which was immediately accepted by 



66 ROUAWABOUT PAPERS. 

Tom and Jerry. A turn or two in Bond Street, a x/r(?// through 
Piccadilly, a look in at Tattersall's, a ramble through Pall 
Mall, and a strict on the Corinthian path, fully occupied the 
time of our heroes until the hour for dinner arrived, when a 
few [-.lasses of Tom's rich wines soon put them on the qui vive. 
Vauxhall was then the object in view, and the Trio started, 
bent upon enjoying the pleasures which this place so amply 
affords." 

How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those capi- 
tals, bring out the writer's wit and relieve the eye 1 They are 
as good as jokes, though you mayn't quite perceive the point. 
Mark the varieties of lounge in which the young men indulge — 
now a stroll, then a look in, then a ramble, and presently a strut. 
When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I have read in an 
old Magazine, " the Prince's lounge " was a peculiar manner 
of walking which the young bucks imitated. At Windsor 
George III. had a cat's path — a sly early walk which the good 
old king took in the gray morning before his household was 
astir. What was the Corinthian path here recorded } Dees 
:any antiquary know? And what were the rich wines which our 
friends took, and which enabled them to enjoy Vauxhall ? 
Vauxhall is gone, but the wines which could occasion such a 
delightful perversion of the intellect as to enable it to enjoy 
ample pleasures there, what were they? 

So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, the 
rustic, is fairly knocked up by all this excitement and is forced 
to go home, and the last picture represents him getting into 
the coach at the "White Horse Cellar," he being one of six 
inside ; whilst his friends shake him by the hand ; whilst the 
sailor mounts on the roof; whilst the Jews hang round with 
oranges, knives, and sealing-wax : whilst the guard is closing 
the door. Where are they now, those sealing-wax vendors ? 
where are the guards ? where are the jolly teams ? where are 
the coaches ? and where the youth that climbed inside and out 
of them ; that heard the merry horn which sounds no more ; 
that saw the sun rise over Stonehenge ; that rubbed away the 
bitter tears at night after parting as the coach sped on the 
journey to school and London ; that looked out with beating 
heart as the milestones flew by, for the welcome corner where 
began home and holidays ? 

It is night now : and here is home. Gathered under the 
quiet roof elders and children lie alike at rest. In the midst 
of a great peace and calm, the stars look out from the heavens. 
The silence is peopled with the past; sorrowful remorses for 



ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 



67 



sins and shortcomings — memories of passionate jo3^s and griefs 
rise out of their graves, both now alike calm and sad. Eyes, 
as I shut mine, look at me, that have long ceased to shine. 
The town and the fair landscape sleep under the starlight, 
wreathed in the autumn mists. Twinkling among the houses 
a light keeps watch here and there, in what may be a sick 
chamber or two. The clock tolls swee ly in the silent air. 
Here is night and rest. An awful sense of thanks makes the 
hearr swell, and the head bow, as I pass to my room through 
the sleeping nouse, and feel as though a hushed blessing were 
upon it. 



ON A yOKE I ONCE HEARE> FROM THE LATE 
THOMAS HOOD. 



H E good-natured reader 
who has perused some of 
these rambling papers has 
long since seen (if to see 
has been worth his trou- 
ble) that the writer belongs 
to the old-fashioned classes 
of this world, loves to re- 
member very much more 
than to prophesy, and 
though he can't help being 
carried onward, and down- 
ward, perhaps, on the hill 
of life, the swift milestones 
marking their forties, fifties 
— how many tens or lustres 
shall we say? — he sits 
under Time, the white- 
wigged charioteer, with his 
back to the horses, and his face to the past, looking at the 
receding landscape and the hills fading into the gray distance. 
Ah me ! those gra)', distant hills were green once, and here^ and 
covered with smiling people ! As we came jip the hill there 
was difficulty, and here and there a hard pull to be sure, but 
strength and spirits, and all sorts of cheery incident and com- 
panionship on the road ; there were the tough struggles (by 




68 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

heaven's merciful will) overcome the pauses, the faintings, the 
weakness, the lost way, perhaps, the bitter weather, the dreadful 
partings, the lonely night, the passionate grief — towards these 
I turn my thoughts, as I sit and think in my hobby-coach 
under Time, the silver-wigged charioteer. The young folks in 
the same carriage meanwhile are looking forwards. Nothing 
escapes their keen eyes — not a flower at the side of a cottage 
garden, nor a bunch of rosy-faced children at the gate : the 
landscape is all bright, the air brisk and jolly, the town yonder 
looks beautiful, and do you think they have learned to be diffi- 
cult about the dishes at the inn ? 

Now, suppose Paterfamilias on his journey with his wife and 
children in the sociable, and he passes an ordinary brick 
house on the road with an ordinary little garden, in the 
front, we will say, and quite an ordinary knocker to the door, 
and as many sashed windows as you please, quite common 
and square, and tiles, windows, chimney-pots, quite like others; 
or suppose, in driving over such and such a common, he sees 
an ordinary tree, and an ordinary donkey browsing under it, if 
you like — wife and daughter look at these objects without the 
slightest particle of curiosity or interest. What is a brass 
knocker to them but a lion's head, or what not ? and a thorn- 
tree with a pool beside it, but a pool in which a thorn and a 
jackass are reflected ? 

But you remember how once upon a time your heart used to 
beat, as you beat on that brass knocker, and whose eyes looked 
from the window above. You remember how by that thorn-tree 
and pool, where the geese were performing a prodigious evening 
concert, there might be seen, at a certain hour, somebody in a 
certain cloak and bonnet, who happened to be coming from 
a village yonder, and whose image has flickered in that pool. 
In that pool, near the thorn ? Yes, in that goose-pool, never 
mind how long ago, when there were reflected the images of the 
geese — and two geese more. Here, at least, an oldster may 
have the advantage of his young fellow-travellers, and so 
Putney Heath or the New Road may be invested with a halo 
of brightness invisible to them, because it only beams out of 
his own soul. 

I have been reading the " Memorials of Hood " by his chil- 
dren,* and wonder whether the book will have the same interest 
for others and for younger people, as for persons of my own age 
and calling. Books of travel to any country become interesting 
to us who have been there. Men revisit the old school though 

* Memorials of Thomas Hood. Moxon, iS6o. 2 vols. 



ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 6g 

hateful to them, with ever so much kindliness and sentimental 
affection. There was the tree under which the bully licked 
you ; here the ground where you had to fag out on holidays, 
and so forth. In a word, my dear sir, Yoii are the most inter- 
esting subject to yourself, of any that can occupy your worship's 
thoughts. I have no doubt, a Crimean soldier, reading a his- 
tory of that siege, and how Jones and the gallant 99th were 
ordered to charge or what not, thinks, " Ah, yes, we of the 
1 00th were placed so and so, I perfectly remember." So with 
this memorial of poor Hood, it may have, no doubt, a greater 
interest for me than for others, for I was fighting, so to speak, 
in a different part of the field, and engaged a young subaltern, 
in the Battle of Life, in which Hood fell, young still and cov- 
ered with glory. " The Bridge of Sighs " was his (."orunna, 
his heights of Abraham — sickly, weak, wounded, he fell in the 
full blaze and fame of that great victory. 

What manner of man was the genius who penned that 
famous song ? What like was Wolfe, who climbed and con- 
quered on those famous heights of Abraham 1 We all want to 
know details regarding men who have achieved famous feats, 
whether of war, or wit, or eloquence, or endurance, or knowl- 
edge. His one or tv/o happy and heroic actions take a man's 
name and memory out of the crowd of names and memories. 
Henceforth he stands eminent. We scan him : we want to 
know all about him ; we walk around and examine him, are 
curious, perhaps, and think are we not as strong and tall and 
capable as yonder champion ; were we not bred as well, and 
could we not endure the winter's cold as well as he .'' Or we 
look up with all our eyes of admiration ; will find no fault in 
our hero : declare his beauty and proportions perfect ; his 
critics envious detractors, and so forth. Yesterday, before he 
performed his feat, he was nobod}'. Who cared about his 
birth-place, his parentage, or the color of his hair? To-day, 
by some single achievement, or by a series of great actions to 
which his genius accustoms us, he is famous, and antiquarians 
are busy finding out under what schoolmaster's ferule he was 
educated, where his grandmother was vaccinated, and so forth. 
If half-a-dozen washing-bills of Goldsmith's were to be found 
to-morrow, would they not inspire a general interest, and be 
printed in a hundred papers ? I lighted upon Oliver, not very 
long since, in an old Town and Country Magazine, at the 
Pantheon masquerade " in an old English habit." Straightway 
my imagination ran out to meet him, to look at him, to follow 
him about. I forgot the names of scores of fine gentlemen of 



70 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



the past age, who were mentioned besides. We want to see 
this man who has amused and charmed us ; who has been our 
friend, and given us hours of pleasant companionship and 
kindly thought, I protest when I came, in the midst of those 
names of people of Fashion, and beaux, and demireps, upon 
those names " Sir jf. Ji-yii-lds, in a domino ; Mr. Cr-d-cJz and 
Dr. G-Idsm-ih, in tioo old English dresses " I had, so to speak, 
my heart in my mouth. What, you here, my dear Sir Joshua ? 
Ah, what an honor and privilege it is to see you ! This is Mr. 
Goldsmith .'' And very much, sir, the ruff and the slashed 
doublet become you ! O doctor ! what a pleasure I had and 
have in reading the Afiimated Nature. How did you learn the 
secret of writing the decasyllabic line, and whence that sweet 
wailing note of tenderness that accompanies your song ? Was 
Beau Tibbs a real man, and will you do me the honor of allow- 
ing me to sit at your table at supper } Don't you think you 
know how he would have talked ? Would you not have liked 
to hear him prattle over the champagne ? 

Now, Hood is passed away — passed off the earth as much 
as Goldsmith or Horace. The times in which he lived, and in 
which very many of us lived and were young, are changing or 
changed. I saw Hood one ) as a young man, at a dinner which 
seems almost as ghostly now as that masquerade at the Pan- 
theon (1772), of which we were speaking anon. It was at a 
dinner of the Literary Fund, in that vast apartment which is 
hung round with the portraits of very large Royal P'reemasons, 
now unsubstantial ghosts. There at the end of the room was 
Hood. Some publishers, I think, were our companions. I 
quite remember his pale face ; he was thin and deaf, and very 
silent ; he scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and he 
made one pun. Some gentleman missed his snuff-box, and 
Hood said, ***** (the Freemasons' Tavern was kept, you 
must remember, by Mr. Cuff in those days, not by its present 
proprietors). Well, the box being lost, and asked for, and Cuff 
(remember that name) being the name of the landlord, Hood 
opened his silent jaws and said * * * Shall I tell you what 
he said ? It was not a very good pun, which the great punster 
then made. Choose your favorite pun of " Whims and Od- 
dities," and fancy that was the joke which he contributed to 
the hilarity of our little table. 

Where those asterisks are drawn on the page, you must 
know, a pause occurred, during which I was engaged with 
" Hood's Own," having been referred to the book by this life 
of the author which I have just been reading. I am not going 



ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 71 

to dissert on Hood's humor ; I am not a fair judge. Have I 
not said elsewhere that tliere are one or two wonderfully old 
gentlemen still alive who used to give me tips when I was a 
boy ? I can't be a fair critic about them. I always think of 
that sovereign, Jhat rapture of raspberry-tarts, which made my 
young daj^s happy. Those old sovereign-contributors may tell 
stories ever so old, and I shall laugh ; they may commit mur- 
der, and I shall believe it was justifiable homicide. There is 
my friend Baggs, who goes about abusing me, and of course 
our dear mutual friends tell me. Abuse away, mon bon ! You 
were so kind to me when I wanted kindness, that you may 
take the change out of that gold now, and say I am a cannibal 
and negro, if you will. Ha, Baggs ! Dost thou wince as thou 
readest this line ? Does guilty conscience throbbing at thy 
breast tell thee of whom the fable is narrated \ Puff out thy 
wrath, and, when it has ceased to blow, my Baggs shall be to 
me as the Baggs of old — the generous, the gentle, the friendly. 
No, on second thoughts, I am determined I will not repeat 
that joke which I heard Hood make. He says he wrote these 
jokes with such ease that he sent manuscripts to the publishers 
faster than they could acknowledge the receipt thereof. I 
won't say that they were all good jokes, or that to read a great 
book full of them is a work at present altogether jocular. 
Writing to a friend respecting some memoir of him which had 
been published. Hood says, " You will judge how well the 
author knows me, when he says my mind is rather serious than 
comic." At the time when he wrote these words, he evidently 
undervalued his own serious power, and thought that in pun- 
ning and broad-grinning lay his chief strength. Is not there 
something touching in that simplicity and humility of faith? 
" To make laugh is my calling," says he ; " I must jump, 
I must grin, I must tumble, I must turn language head over 
heels, and leap through grammar;" and he goes to his work 
humbly and courageously, and what he has to do that 
does he with all his might, through sickness, through sorrow, 
through exile, poverty, fever, depression — there he is, always 
ready to his work, and with a jewel of genius in his pocket ! 
Why, when he laid down his puns and pranks, put the motley 
off, and spoke out of his heart, all England and America 
listened with teaTrs and wonder ! Other men have delusions of 
conceit, and fancy themselves greater than they are, and that 
the world slights them. Have we not heard how Liston always 
thought he ought to play Hamlet ? Here is a man with a 
power to touch the heart almost unequalled, and he passes 



72 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



days and years in writing, " Young Ben he was a nice young 
man," and so fortli. To say truth, 1 have been reading \\\ a 
book of " Hood's Own " until I am perfectly angry. " You 
great man, you good man, you true genius and poet," I cry 
out, as I turn page after page. " Do, do make no more of 
these jokes, but be yourself, and take your station." 

When Hood was on his death-bed, Sir Robert Peel, who 
only knew of his illness, not of his imminent danger, wrote to 
him a noble and touching letter, announcing that a pension 
was conferred on him : 

" I am more than repaid," writes Peel, "by the personal satisfnction which I have had 
in doing that for which you return me warm and characteristic acknowledgments. 

" You perhaps thinlc that you are known to one with such multifarious occupations as 
myself, merely by general reputation as an author ; but I assure you that there can be 
little, which you have written ai.d acknowledged, which I have not read ; and tliat there 
are few who can appreciate and admire more than myself, the good sense and good feeling 
which have taught you to nifuse so much fun and merriment into writings correcting folly 
and exposing absurdities, and yet never trespassing beyond those limits within which wit 
and facetiousness are not very often confined. You may write on v.ith ihe consciousness of 
independence, as free and unfettered, as if no communication had ever passed between us. 
I am not conferring a private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions of the 
legislature, which has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain sum (miserable, indeed, 
in amount) to be applied to the recognition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown. If 
you will review the names of those whose claims have been admitted on account of their lite- 
rary or scientific eminence, you will find an ample confirmation of the truth of my statement. 

" One return, indeed, I shall ask of you — that you will give me the opportunity of 
making your personal acquaintance." 

And Hood, writing to a friend, enclosing a copy of Peel's 
letter, says, " Sir R. Peel came from Burleigh on Tuesday 
night, and went down to Brighton on Saturday. If he had 
written by post, I should not have had it till to-day. So he 
sent his servant with the enclosed on Saturday night ; another 
mark of considerate attention." He is frightfully unwell, he 
continues : his wife says he looks quite green ; but ill as he is, 
poor fellow, " his well is not dry. He has pumped out a sheet 
of Chistmas fun, is drawing some cuts, and shall write a sheet 
more of his novel." 

Oh, sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient 
endurance, of duty struggling against pain ! How noble Peel's 
figure is standing by that sick bed ! how generous his words, 
how dignified and sincere his compassion ! And the poor 
dying man, with a heart full of natural gratitude towards his 
noble benefactor, must turn to him and say — " If it be well to 
be remembered by a Minister, it is better still not to be for- 
gotten by him in a ' hurly Burleigh ! ' " Can you laugh } Is 
not the joke horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips } As 
dying Robin Hood must fire a last shot with his bow — as one 
reads of Catholics on their death-beds putting on a Capuchin 
dress to go out of the world — here is poor Hood at his last 
hour putting on his ghastly motley, and uttering one joke more. 



ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 73 

He dies, however, in dearest love and peace with his chil- 
dren, wife, friends \ to the former especially his whole life had 
been devoted, and every day showed his fidelity, simplicity, 
and affection. In going through the record of his most pure, 
modest, honorable life, and living along with him, you come to 
trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is a most loyal, affec- 
tionate, and upright soul, with whom you have been brought 
into communion. Can we say as much of the lives of all men 
of letters ? Here is one at least without guile, without preten- 
sion, without scheming, of a pure life, to his family and little 
modest circle of friends tenderly devoted. 

And what a hard work, and what a slender reward ! In the 
little domestic details with which the book abounds, what a 
simple hfe is shown to us ! The most simple little pleasure and 
amusements delight and occupy him. You have revels on 
shrimps j the good wife making the pie ; details about the 
maid, and criticisms on her conduct ; wonderful tricks played 
with the plum-pudding — all the pleasures centring round the 
little humble home. One of the first men of his time, he is 
appointed editor of a Magazine at a salary of 300/. per annum, 
signs himself exultingly " Ed. N. M. M.," and the family rejoice 
over the income as over a fortune. He goes to a Greenwich 
dinner — what a feast and a rejoicing afterwards ! — • 

"Well, we drank 'the Boz' with a delectable clatter, which drew from him a good 
warm-hearted speech. * ♦ * He looked very well, and had a younger brother along 
with him. » » * Then we had songs. Bnrham chanted a Robin Hood ballad, and 

Cruikshank sang a burlesque ballad of Lord H ; and somebody, unknown to me, gave 

a capital imitation of a French showman. Then we toasted Mrs. Hoz, and the Chairman, 
and Vice, and tlie Traditional Priest sang the ' Deep deep sea,' in his deep deep voice ; and 
then we drank to Proctor, who wrote the said song ; also Sir J. Wilson's good health, and 
Cruikshank's, and Ainsworth's : and a INIanchester friend of the latter sang a Manchester 
ditty, so full of trading stuff, that it really seemed to have been not composed but manu- 
factured. Jordan, as Jerdanishas usual on such occasions — yon know how paradoxically he 
is quite at houfj in dining- out. As to myself. I had to make my second maiden speech, for 
Mr. Monckton Milnes proposed my health in terms my modesty might allow me to repeat to 
you, b>it my memory won't. However, I ascribed the toast to my notoriously bad health, 
and assured them that their wishes had already improved it— that I felt a brisker circulation 
— a more genial warmth about the heart, and explained that a certain trembling of my hand 
was not from palsy, or my old ague, but an inclination in my liand to shake itself with every 
one present. Whereupon 1 had to go through the friendly ceremony with as many of the 
company as were within reach, besides a few more who came express from the other end of 
the table. rVrc gratifyinr, wasn't it? Though I cannot go quite so far as Jane, who 
wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserv'ed ni spirits. She was sitting 
up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go out, because I am so d(M,icstic and steady, and 
was down at the door before I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own 
carriage. Poor girl ! what uioidd she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame one ? " 

And the poor anxious wife is sitting up, and fondles the 
hand which has been shaken by so many illustrious men ! The 
little feast dates back only eighteen years, and yet somehow it 
seems as distant as a dinner at Mr. Thrale's, or a meeting at 
Will's. 



74 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



Poor little gleam of sunshine ! very little good cheer enlivens 
that sad simple life. We have the triumph of the Magazine : 
then a new Magazine projected and produced : then illness and 
the last scene, and the kind Peel by the dying man's bedside 
speaking noble words of respect and sympathy, and soothing 
the last throbs of the tender honest heart. 

I like, I say, Hood's life even better than his books, and I 
wish, with all my heart. Monsieur d chcr confrere, the same could 
be said for both of us, when the inkstream of our life hath 
ceased to run. Yes : if I drojD first, dear Baggs, I trust you 
may find reason to modify some of the unfavorable views of my 
character, which you are freely imparting to our mutual friends. 
What ought to be the literary man's point of honor nowadays ? 
Suppose, friendly reader, you are one of the craft, what legacy 
would you like to leave to your children ? First of all (and by 
heaven's gracious help) you would pray and strive to give them 
such an endowment of love, as should last certainly for all their 
lives, and perhaps be transmitted to their children. You would 
(by the same aid and blessing) keep your honor pure, and trans- 
mit a name unstained to those who have a right to bear it. 
You would, though this faculty of giving is one of the easiest of 
the literary man's qualities — you would, out of your earnings, 
small or great, be able to help a poor brother in need, to dress 
his wounds, and, if it were but twopence, to give him succor. 
Is the money which the noble Macaulaygave to the poor lost to 
his family ? God forbid. To the loving hearts of his kindred 
is it not rather the most precious part of their inheritance ? It 
was invested in love and righteous doing, and it bears interest 
in heaven. You will, if letters be your vocation, find saving 
harder than giving and spending. To save be your endeavor, 
too, against the night's coming when no man can work ; when 
the arm is weary with the long day's labor ; when the brain 
perhaps grows dark ; when the old, who can labor no more, want 
warmth and rest, and the young ones call for supper. 



I copied the little galley-slave who is made to figure in the 
initial letter of this paper, from a quaint old silver spoon which 
we purchased in a curiosity-shop at the Hague. It is one of 
the gift spoons so common in Holland, and which have multi- 
plied so astonishingly of late years at our dealers' in old silver- 
ware. Along the stem of the spoon are written the words : 
"Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen^' — " In the year 



ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 75 

1609 I went thus clad." The good Dutchman was released 
from his Algerine captivity (I imagine his figure looks like that 
of a slave amongst the Moors), and in his thank-offering to 
some godchild at home, he thus piously records his escape. 

Was not poor Cervantes also a captive amongst the Moors? 
Did not Fielding, and Goldsmith, and Smollett, too, die at the 
chain as well as poor Hood ? Think of Fielding going on 
board his wretched ship in the Thames, with scarce a hand to 
bid him farewell ; of brave Tobias Smollett, and his life, how 
hard, and how poorly rewarded ; of Goldsmith, and the physi- 
cian whispering, " Have you something on your mind ? " and 
the wild dying eyes answering, " Yes." Notice how Boswell 
speaks of Goldsmith, and the splendid contempt with which he 
regards him. Read Hawkins on Fielding, and the scorn with 
which Dandy Walpole and Bishop Hurd speak of him. Galley- 
slaves doomed to tug the oar and wear the chain, whilst my 
lords and dandies take their pleasure, and hear fine music and 
disport with fine ladies in the cabin ! 

But stay. Was there any cause for this scorn ? Had some 
of these great men weaknesses which gave inferiors advantage 
over Ihem ? Men of letters cannot lay their hands on their 
hearts, and say, " No, the fault was fortune's, and the indiffer- 
ent world's not Goldsmith's nor Fielding's." There was no 
reason why Oliver should always be thriftless ; why Fielding 
and Steele should sponge upon their friends ; why Sterne should 
make love to his neighbors' wives. Swift, for a long time, was 
as poor as any wag that ever laughed : but he owed no penny 
to his neighbors : Addison, when he wore his most threadbare 
coat, could hold his head up, and maintain his dignity : and, I 
dare vouch, neither of those gentlemen, when they were ever so 
poor, asked any man alive to pity their condition, and have a 
regard to the weaknesses incidental to the literary profession. 
Galley-slave, forsooth ! If you are sent to prison for some 
error for which the law awards that sort of laborious seclusion, 
so much the more shame for you. If you are chained to the 
oar as a prisoner of war, like Cervantes, you have the pain, but 
not the shame, and the friendly compassion of mankind to re- 
ward you. Galley-slaves, indeed ! What man has not his oar 
to pull ? There is that wonderful old stroke-oar in the Queen's 
galley. How many j'^ears has he pulled ? Day and night, in 
rough water or smooth, with what invincible vigor and surpris- 
ing gayety he plies his arms. There is the same GaVere Capi- 
taine, that well-known, trim figure, the bow-oar ; how he tugs, 
and with what a will ! How both of them have been abused in 



76 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

their time ! Take the Lawyer's galley, and that dauntless 
octogenarian in command; when has he ever complained or re- 
pined about his slavery ? There is the Priest's galley — black 
and lawn sails — do any mariners out of Thames work harder? 
When lawyer, and statesman, and divine, and writer are snug 
in bed, there is a ring at the poor Doctor's bell. Forth he 
must go, in rheumatism or snow ; a galley-slave bearing his 
galley-pots to quench the flames of fever, to succor mothers and 
young children in their hour of peril, and, as gently and sooth- 
ingly as may be, to carry the hopeless patient over to the silent 
shore. And have we not just read of the actions of the Queen's 
galleys and their brave crews in the Chinese waters ? Men no*" 
more worthy of human renown and honor to-day in their victory, 
than last year in their glorious hour of disaster. So with stout 
hearts may we ply the oar, messmates all, till the voyage is over, 
and the Harbor of Rest is found. 



EOUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 

The kindly Christmas tree, from which I trust every gentle 
reader has pulled a bonbon or two, is yet all aflame whilst I 
am writing, and sparkles with the sweet fruits of its season. 
You young ladies, may you have plucked pretty giftlings from 
it ; and out of the cracker sugar-plum which you have split 
with the captain or the sweet young curate may you have read 
one of those delicious conundrums which the confectioners 
introduce into the sweetmeats, and which apply to the cunning 
passion of love. Those riddles are to be read at your age, when 
I dare say they are amusing. As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, 
who are standing at the tree, they don't care about the love- 
riddle part, but understand the sweet-almond portion very well. 
They are four, five, six years old. Patience, little people ! A 
dozen merry Christmases more, and you will be reading those 
wonderful love-conundrums, too. As for us elderly folks, we 
watch the babies at their sport, and the young people pulling 
at the branches : and instead of finding bonbons or sweeties 
in the packets which we pluck off the boughs, we find enclosed 
Mr. Carnifex's review of the quarter's meat ; Mr. Sartor's com- 
pliments, and little statement for self and the young gentlemen; 
and Madame de Sainte-Crinoline's respects to the young ladies, 



ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 



77 



who encloses her account, and will send on Saturday, please ; 
or we stretch our hand out to the educational branch of the 
Christinas tree, and there find a lively and amusing article from 
the Rev. Henry Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy's ex- 
ceedingly moderate account for the last term's school ex- 
penses. 

The ^ree yet sparkles, I say. I am writing on the day 
before Twelfth Day, if you must know ; but already ever so 
many of the fruits have been pulled, and the Christmas lights 
have gone out. Bobby Miseltow, who has been staying with 
us for a week (and who has been sleeping mysteriously in the 
bath-room), comes to say he is going away to spend the rest of 
the holidays with his grandmother — and I brush away the manly 
tear of regret as I part with the dear child. " Well, Bob, 
good-by, since you will go. Compliments to grandmamma. 

Thank her for the turkey. Here's " (^A slight peamiary 

transaction takes place at this juncture^ and Bob nods a?id 7vijiks, 
and puts his hand in his waistcoat pocket^ "You have had a 
pleasant week .'' " 

Bob. — " Haven't I ! " {And exit, anxious to know the amount 
of the coin which has just changed hands ^ 

He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door 
(behind which I see him perfectly), I too cast up a little account 
of our past Christmas week. When Bob's holidays are over, 
and the printer has sent me back this manuscript, I know 
Christmas will be an old story. All the fruit will be off the 
Christmas tree then ; the crackers will have cracked off ; the 
almonds will have been crunched ; and the sweet-bitter riddles 
will have been read ; the lights will have perished off the dark 
green boughs ; the toys growing on them will have been dis- 
tributed, fought for, cherished, neglected, broken. Ferdinand 
and Fidelia will each keep out of it (be still, my gushing heart !) 
the remembrance of a riddle read together, of a double-almond 
munched together, and the moiety of an exploded cracker * * * 
The maids, I say, will have taken down all that holly stuff and 
nonsense about the clocks, lamps, and looking-glasses, the 
dear boys will be back at school, fondly thinking of the pan- 
tomime-fairies whom they have seen ; whose gaudy gossamer 
wings are battered by this time ; and whose pink cotton (or 
silk is it ?) lower extremities are all dingy and dusty. Yet but 
a few days, Bob, and flakes of paint will have cracked on the 
fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples of adamantine 
lustre will be as shabby as the city of Pekin. When you read 
this, will Clown still be going on lolling his tongue out of his 



^8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

mouth, and saying, " How are you to-morrow ? " To-morrow, 
indeed ! He must be almost ashamed of himself (if that cheek 
is still capable of the blush of shame) for asking the absurd 
question. To-morrow, indeed ! To-morrow the diffugient snows 
will give place to Spring ; the snow-drops will lift their heads ; 
Ladyday may be expected, and the pecuniary duties peculiar 
to that feast ; in place of bonbons, trees will have an eruption 
of light green knobs ; the whitebait season will bloom * * * 
as if one need go on describing these vernal phenomena, when 
Christmas is still here, though ending, and the subject of my 
discourse ! 

We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted 
how boisterously jolly they become at Christmas time. What 
wassail-bowls, robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts 
of Christmas song ! And then to think that these festivities are 
prepared months before — that these Christmas pieces are pro- 
phetic ! How kind of artists and poets to devise the festivities 
beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper time ! We ought 
to be grateful to them, as to the cook who gets up at midnight 
and sets the pudding a boiling, which is to feast us at six 
o'clock. I often think with gratitude of the famous Mr. Nelson 
Lee — the author of I don't know how many hundred glorious 
pantomimes — walking by the summer wave 3t Margate, or 
Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind the idea of some new 
gorgeous spectacle of faerj^, which the winter shall see com- 
plete. He is like cook at midnight {siparva licef). He watches 
and thinks. He pounds the sparkling sugar of benevolence, 
the plums of fancy, the sweetmeats of fun, the figs of — well, 
the figs of fairy fiction, let us say, and pops the whole in the 
seething cauldron of imagination, and at due season serves up 
THE Pantomime. 

Very few men in the course of nature can expect to see all 
the pantomimes in one season, but I hope to the end of my 
life I shall never forego reading about them in that delicious 
sheet of 77^1? Times which appears on the morning after Boxing- 
day. Perhaps reading is even better than seeing. The best 
way, I think, is to say you are ill, lie in bed, and have the 
paper for two hours, reading all the way down from Drury 
Lane to the Britannia at Hoxton. Bob and I went to two 
pantomimes. One was at the Theatre of Fancy, and the other 
at the Fairy Opera, and I don't know which we liked the 
be-^t. 

At the Fancy, we saw " Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy's 
Ghost and Nunky's Pison," which is all very well — but, gentle- 



ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 



79 



men, if you don't respect Sliakspeare, to whom will you be 
civil ? The palace and ramparts of Elsinore by moon and 
snowlight is one of Loutherbourg's finest efforts. The ban- 
queting hall of the palace is illuminated : the peaks and gables 
glitter with the snow : the sentinels march blowing their fingers 
with the cold — the freezing of the nose of one of them is very 
neatly and dexterously arranged : the snow-storm rises : the 
wind howls awfully along the battlements : the waves come 
curling, leaping, foaming to shore. Hamlet's umbrella is 
whirled away in the storm. He and his two friends stamp on 
each other's toes to keep them warm. The storm-spirits rise 
in the air, and are whirled howling round the palace and the 
rocks. My eyes ! what tiles and chimney-pots fly hurling 
through the air ! As the storm reaches its height (here the 
wind instruments come in with prodigious effect, and I compli- 
ment Mr. Brumby and the violoncellos) — as the snow-storm 
rises, (queek, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and then thrumpty 
thrump comes a pizzicato movement in Bob Major, which sends 
a shiver into your very boot-soles,) the thunder-clouds deepen 
(bong, bong, bong, from the violoncellos). The forked light- 
ning quivers through the clouds in a zig-zag scream of violins 
— and look, look, look ! as the frothing, roaring waves come 
rushing up the battlements, and over the reeling parapet, each 
hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the gun-carriages rolling 
over the platform, and plunges howling into the water again. 

Hamlet's mother comes on to the battlements to look for 
her son. The storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and 
she retires screaming in pattens. 

The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore 
are seen to drive off, and several people are drowned. The 
gas-lamps along the street are wrenched from their foundations, 
and shoot through the troubled air. Whist, rush, hish ! how 
the rain roars and pours ! The darkness becomes awful, always 
deepened by the power of the music — and see — in the midst 
of a rush, and whirl, and scream of spirits of air and wave — 
what is that ghastly figure moving hither 1 It becomes bigger, 
bigger, as it advances down the platform — more ghastly, more 
horrible, enormous ! It is as tall as the whole stage. It seems 
to be advancing on the stalls and pit, and the whole house 
screams with terror, as the Ghost of the late Hamlet comes 
in, and begins to speak. Several people faint, and the light- 
fingered gentry pick pockets furiously in the darkness. 

In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes 
about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the 



8o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest 
spectator must have felt frightened. But hark ! what is that 
silver shimmer of the fiddles ! Is it — can it be — the gray dawn 
peeping in the stormy east ? The ghost's eyes look blankly 
towards it, and roll a ghastly agony. Quicker, quicker j)ly the 
violins of Phoebus Apollo. Redder, redder grow the orient 
clouds. Cockadoodledoo ! crows that great cock which has 
just come out on the roof of the palace. And now the round 
sun himself pops up from behind the waves of night. Where 
is the ghost .-' He is gone ! Purple shadows of morn " slant 
o'er the snowy sward," the city wakes up in life and sunshine, 
and we confess we are very much relieved at the disappearance 
of the ghost. We don't like those dark scenes in pantomimes. 

After the usual business, that Ophelia should be turned into 
Columbine was to be expected ; but I confess I was a little 
shocked when Hamlet's mother became Pantaloon, and was 
instantly knocked down by Clown Claudius. Grimaldi is getting 
a little old now, but for real humor there are few clowns like 
him. Mr. Shuter, as the gravedigger, was chaste and comic, 
as he always is, and the scene-painters surpassed themselves. 

" Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of Hastings," at the 
other house, is very pleasant too. The irascible William is 
acted with great vigor by Snoxall, and the battle of Plastings is 
a good piece of burlesque. Some trifling liberties are taken 
with history, but what liberties will not the merry genius of 
pantomime permit himself ? At the battle of Hastings, William 
is on the point of being defeated by the Sussex volunteers, very 
elegantly led by the always pretty Miss Waddy (as Haco Sharp- 
shooter), when a shot from the Normans kills Harold. The 
fairy Edith hereupon comes forward, and finds his body, which 
straightway leaps up a live harlequin, whilst the Conqueror 
makes an excellent clown, and the Archbishop of Bayeux, a 
diverting pantaloon, &c., &c., &c. 

Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw ; but 
one description will do as well as another. The plots, you see, 
are a little intricate and difficult to understand in pantomimes ; 
and I may have mixed up one with another. That I was at the 
theatre on Boxing-night is certain — but the pit was so full that 
I could only see fairy legs glittering in the distance, as I stood 
at the door. And if I was badly off, I think there was a young 
gentleman behind me worse off still. I own that he has good 
reason (though others have not) to speak ill of me behind my 
back, and hereby beg his pardon. 

Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in Picca- 



ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 8 1 

dilly, who had slipped and fallen in the snow, and was there on 
his back, uttering energetic expressions ; that party begs to 
offer thanks, and compliments of the season. 

Bob's behavior on New Year's day, I can assure Dr. Holy- 
shade, was highly creditable to the boy. He had expressed a 
determination to partake of every dish which was put on the 
table; but after soup, fish, roast-beef, and roast-goose, he re- 
tired from active business until the pudding and mincepie made 
their appearance, of which he partook liberally, but not too 
freely. And he greatly advanced in my good opinion by praising 
the punch, which was of my own manufacture, and which some 
gentlemen present (Mr. O'M — g — n, amongst others) pronounced 
to be too weak. Too weak ! A bottle of rum, a bottle of 
Madeira, half a bottle of brandy, and two bottles and a half of 
water — can this mixture be said to be too weak for any mortal ? 
Our young friend amused the company during the evening, by 
exhibiting a two-shilling magic-lantern, which he had purchased 
and likewise by singing " Sally, come up ! " a quaint, but rather 
monotonous melody, which I am told is sung by the poor negro 
on the banks of the broad Mississippi. 

What other enjoyments did we proffer for the child's amuse- 
ment during the Christmas week ? A great philosopher was 
giving a lecture to young folks at the British Institution, But 
when this diversion was proposed to our young friend Bob, he 
said, " Lecture "i No, thank you. Not as I knows on," and 
made sarcastic signals on his nose. Perhaps he is of Dr. John- 
son's opinion about lectures : " Lectures, sir ! what man would 
go to hear that imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at 
leisure in a book ? " I never went, of my own choice, to a 
lecture ; that I can vow. As for sermons, they are different \ 
I delight in them, and they cannot, of course, be too long. 

Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights besides 
pantomime, pudding, and pie. One glorious, one delightful, 
one most unlucky and pleasant day, we drove in a brougham, 
with a famous horse, which carried us more quickly and briskly 
than any of your vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on 
which the horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron ; through 
suburban villages, plum-caked with snow; under a leaden sky, 
in which the sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan ; by pond 
after pond, where not only men and boys, but scores after scores 
of women and girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping 
their lean old sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and 
their hob-nailed shoes flew up in the air ; the air frosty with a 
lilac haze, through which villas, and commons, and churches, and; 

6 



82 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

plantations glimmered. We drive up the hill, Bob and I ; we 
make the last two miles in eleven minutes ; we pass that poor, 
armless man who sits there in the cold, following you with his 
eyes. I don't give anything, and Bob looks disappointed. We 
are set down neatly at the gate, and a horse-holder opens the 
brougham door. I don't give anything ; again disappointment 
on Bob's part. I pay a shilling apiece, and we enter into the 
glorious building, which is decorated for Christmas, and straight- 
way forgetfulness on Bob's part of everything but that magnifi- 
cent scene. The enormous edifice is all decorated for Bob and 
Christmas. The stalls, the columns, the fountains, courts, 
statues, splendors, are all crowned for Christmas. The deli- 
cious negro is singing his Alabama choruses for Christmas and 
Bob. He has scarcely done, when, Tootarootatoo ! Mr. Punch 
is performing his surprising actions, and hanging the beadle. 
The stalls are decorated. The refreshment-tables are piled 
with good things ; at many fountains " Mulled Claret " is 
written up in appetizing capitals. " Mulled Claret — oh, jolly ! 
How cold it is ! " says Bob ; I pass on. " It's only three 
o'clock," says Bob. "No, only three," I say, meekly. "We 
dine at seven," sighs Bob, " and it's so-o-o coo-old." I still 
would take no hints. No claret, no refreshment, no sandwiches, 
no sausage-rolls for Bob. At last I am obliged to tell him all. 
Just before we left home, a little Christmas bill popped in at 
the door and emptied my purse at the threshold. I forgot all 
about the transaction, and had to borrow half a crown from 
John Coachman to pay for our entrance into the palace of de- 
light. Ncnv you see. Bob, why I could not treat you on that 
second of January when we drove to the palace together; when 
the girls and boys were sliding on the ponds at Dulwich ; when 
the darkling river was full of floating ice, and the sun was like 
a warming-pan in the leaden sky. 

One more Christmas sight we had, of course ; and that sight 
I think I like as well as Bob himself at Christmas, and at all 
seasons. We went to a certain garden of delight, where, what- 
ever your cares are, I think you can manage to forget some of 
them, and muse, and be not unhappy ; to a garden beginning 
with a Z, which is as lively as Noah's ark ; where the fox has 
brought his brush, and the cock has brought his comb, and the 
elephant has brought his trunk, and the kangaroo has brought 
his bag, and the condor his old white wig and black satin hood. 
On this day it was so cold that the white bears winked their 
pink eyes, as they plapped up and down by their pool, and 
seemed to say, "Aha, this weather reminds us of dear home J " 



ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR 83 

"Cold! bah! I have got such a warm coat," says brother 
Bruin, " I don't mind ; " and he laughs on his pole, and clucks 
down a bun. The squealing hyenas gnashed their teeth and 
laughed at us quite refreshingly at their window ; and, cold as 
it was. Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, glared at us red-hot through 
his bars, and snorted blasts of hell. The woolly camel leered 
at us quite kindly as he paced round his ring on his silent pads. 
We went to our favorite places. Our dear wambat came up, 
and had himself scratched very affably. Our fellow-creatures 
in the monkey-room held out their little black hands, and 
piteously asked us for Christmas alms. Those darling alliga- 
tors on their rock winked at us in the most friendly way. The 
solemn eagles sat alone, and scowled at us from their peaks ; 
whilst little Tom Ratel tumbled over head and heels for us in 
his usual diverting manner. If I have cares in my mind, I 
come to the Zoo, and fancy they don't pass the gate. I recog- 
nize my friends, my enemies, in countless cages. I entertained 
the eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, and the black-pated, 
crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou 
stork yesterday at dinner ; and when Bob's aunt came to tea in 
the evening, and asked him what he had seen, he stepped up 
to her gravely, and said — 

" First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black, 
Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back. 

Children I ^'^^" ^ ^^^ ''^^ camel with a hump upon his back! 
Then I saw the gray wolf, with mutton in his maw; 
Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw ; 
Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk, 
Then I saw the monkeys — mercy, how unpleasantly 
they smelt ! " 

There. No one can beat that piece of wit, can he, Bob ? And 
so it is all over ; but we had a jolly time, whilst you were with 
us, hadn't we 1 Present my respects to the doctor ; and I hope, 
my boy, we may spend another merry Christmas next year. 



ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. 

On the door-post of the house of a friend of mine, a few 
inches above the lock, is a little chalk-mark, which some sport- 
ive boy in passing has probably scratched on the pillar. The 



84 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

door-steps, the lock, handle, and so forth, are kept decently 
enough ; but this chalk-mark, I suppose some three inches out 
of the housemaid's beat, has already been on the door for more 
than a fortnight, and I wonder whether it will be there whilst 
this paper is being written, whilst it is at the printer's, and, in 
fine, until the month passes over? I wonder whether the 
servants in that house will read these remarks about the chalk- 
mark ? That the Cortihill Magazine is taken in in that house I 
know. In fact I have seen it there. In fact I have read it 
there. In fact I have written it there. In a word, the house 
to which I allude is mine — the " editor's private residence," to 
which, in spite of prayers, entreaties, commands, and threats, 
authors, and ladies especially, will send their communications, 
although they won't understand that they injure their own 
interests by so doing ; for how is a man who has his own work 
to do, his own exquisite inventions to form and perfect — Maria 
to rescue from the unprincipled Earl — the atrocious General to 
confound in his own machinations — the angelic Dean to pro- 
mote to a bishopric, and so forth — how is a man to do all this, 
under a hundred interruptions, and keep his nerves and temper 
in that just and equable state in which they ought to be when 
he comes to assume the critical office ? As you will send here, 
ladies, I must tell you you have a much worse chance than if 
you forward your valuable articles to Cornhill. Here your 
papers arrive, at dinner-time, we will say. Do you suppose that 
is a pleasant period, and that we are to criticise you between 
the ovum and malum, between the soup and the dessert ? I 
have touched, I think, on this subject before, I say again, if 
you want real justice shown you, don't send your papers to the 
private residence. At home, for instance, yesterday, having 
given strict orders that I was to receive nobody " except on 
business," do you suppose a smiling young Scottish gentleman, 
who forced himself into my study, and there announced himself 
as agent of a Cattle-food Company, was received with pleasure ? 
There, as I sat in my arm-chair, suppose he had proposed to 
draw a couple of my teeth, would I have been pleased ? I 
could have throttled that agent. I dare say the whole of that 
day's work will "be found tinged with a ferocious misanthropy, 
occasioned by my clever young friend's intrusion. Cattle-food, 
indeed ! As if beans, oats, warm mashes, and a ball, are to be 
pushed down a man's throat just as he is meditating on the 
great social problem, or (for I think it was my epic I was going 
to touch up) just as he was about to soar to the height of the 
empyrean ! 



ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. 85 

Having got my cattle-agent out of the door, I resume my 
consideration of that little mark on the door-post, which is 
scored up as the text of the present little sermon ; and which I 
hope will relate, not to chalk, nor to any of its special uses or 
abuses (such as milk, neck-powder, and the like), but to serv- 
ants. Surely ours might remove that unseemly little mark. 
Suppose it were on my coat, might I not request its removal ? 
I remember, when I was at school, a little careless boy, upon 
whose forehead an ink-mark remained, and was perfectly recog- 
nizable for three weeks after its first appearance. May I take 
any notice of this chalk-stain on the forehead of my house ? 
Whose business is it to wash that forehead ? and ought I to 
fetch a brush and a little hot water, and wash it off myself? 

Yes. But that spot removed, why not come down at six, 
and wash the door-steps ? I dare say the early rising and 
exercise would do me a great deal of good. The housemaid, 
in that case, might lie in bed a little later, and have her tea and 
the morning paper brought to her in bed : then, of course, 
Thomas would expect to be helped about the boots and knives ; 
cook about the saucepans, dishes, and what not ; the lady's- 
maid would want somebody to take the curl-papers out of her 
hair, and get her bath ready. You should have a set of servants 
for the servants, and these under-servants should have slaves to 
wait on them. The king commands the first lord in waiting to 
desire the second lord to intimate to the gentleman usher to 
request the page of the ante- chamber to entreat the groom of 
the stairs to implore John to ask the captain of the buttons to 
desire the maid of the still-room to beg the housekeeper to give 
out a few more lumps of sugar, as his Majesty has none for his 
coffee, which probably is getting cold during the negotiation. 
In our little Brentfords we are all kings, more or less. There 
are orders, gradations, hierarchies, everywhere. In your house 
and mine there are mysteries unknown to us. I am not going 
into the horrid old question of ''followers." I don't mean 
cousins from the country, love-stricken policemen, or gentlemen 
in mufti from Knightsbridge Barracks ; but people who have an 
occult right on the premises ; the uncovenanted servants of the 
house ; gray women who are seen at evening with baskets flitting 
about area railings ; dingy shawls which drop you furtive curt- 
seys in your neighborhood ; demure little Jacks, who start 
up from behind boxes in the pantry. Those outsiders wear 
Thomas's crest and livery, and call him " Sir ; " those silent wo- 
men address the female servants as " Mum," and curtsey before 
them, squaring their arms over their wretched lean aprons. 



86 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS 

Then, again, those servi servorum have dependents in the vast, 
silent, poverty-stricken vi^orld outside your comfortable kitchen 
fire, in the world of darkness, and hunger, and miserable cold, 
and dank, flagged cellars, and huddled straw, and rags, in 
which pale children are swarming. It may be your beer (which 
runs with great volubility) has a pipe or two which communi- 
cates with those dark caverns where hopeless anguish pours 
the groan, and would scarce see light but for a scrap or two of 
candle which has been whipped away from your worship's 
kitchen. Not many years ago — I don't know whether before 
or since that white mark was drawn on the door — a lady 
occupied the confidential place of housemaid in this " private 
residence," who brought a good character, who seemed to have 
a cheerful temper, whom I used to hear clattering and bumping 
overhead or on the stairs long before daylight — there, I say, 
was poor Camilla, scouring the plain, trundling and brushing, 
and clattering with her pans and brooms, and humming at her 
work. Well, she had established a smuggling communication 
of beer over the area frontier. This neat-handed Phyllis used 
to pack up the nicest baskets of my provender, and convey 
them to somebody outside — I believe, on my conscience, to 
some poor friend in distress. Camilla was consigned to her 
doom. She was sent back to her friends in the country ; and 
when she was gone we heard of many of her faults. She 
expressed herself, when displeased, in' language that I shall 
not repeat. As for the beer and meat, there was no mistake 
about them. But apres'i Can I have the heart to be very 
angry with that poor jade for helping another poorer jade out 
.of my larder ? On your honor and conscience, when you were 
a boy, and the apples looked temptingly over Farmer Quar- 

ringdon's hedge, did you never ? When there was a grand 

dinner at home, and you were sliding, with Master Bacon, up 
and down the stairs, and the dishes came out, did you ever do 
such a thing as just to — ? Well, in many and many a respect 
servants are like children. They are under domination. They 
are subject to reproof, to ill temper, to petty exactions and 
stupid tyrannies not seldom. They scheme, conspire, fawn, 
and are hypocrites. " Little boys should not loll on chairs." 
" Little girls should be seen, and not heard ; " and so forth. 
Have we not almost all learnt these expressions of old foozles : 
and uttered them ourselves when in the square-toed state ? 
The Eton Master, who was breaking a lance with our Pater- 
familias of late, turned on Paterfamilias, saying, He knows not 
the nature and exquisite candor of well-bred English boys. 



UN A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. g-j 

Exquisite fiddlestick's end, Mr. Master ! Do you mean for to go 
for to tell us that the relations between )'Oung gentlemen and 
their schoolmasters are entirely frank and cordial ; that the lad 
is familiar with the man who can have him flogged ; never shirks 
his exercises ; never gets other boys to do his verses ; never 
does other boys' verses ; never breaks bounds ; never tells fibs 
— I mean the fibs permitted by scholastic honor ? Did I know 
of a boy who pretended to such a character, I would forbid my 
scapegraces to keep company with him. Did I know a school- 
master who pretended to believe in the existence of many 
hundred such boys in one school at one time, I would set that 
man down as a baby in knowledge of the world. " Who was 
making that noise ?" "I don't know, sir." — And he knows it 
was the boy next him in school. " Who was climbing over 
that wall ? " "I don't know, sir." — And it is in the speaker's 
own trousers, very likely, the glass bottle-tops have left their 
cruel scars. And so with servants. " Who ate up the three 
pigeons which went down in the pigeon-pie at breakfast this 
morning ? " " O dear me ! sir, it was John, who went away last 
month ! " — or, " I think it was Miss Mary's canary-bird, which 
got out of the cage, and is so fond of pigeons, it never can have 
enough of them." Yes, it was the canary-bird ; and Eliza saw 
it ; and Eliza is ready to vow she did. These statements are 
not true ; but please don't call them lies. This is not lying ; 
this is voting with your party. You mus^ back your own side. 
The servants'-hall stands by the servants'-hall against the 
dining-room. The schoolboys don't tell tales of each otjier. 
They agree not to choose to know who has made the noise, 
who has broken the window, who has eaten up the pigeons, 
who has picked all the plovers'-eggs out of the aspic, how it is 
that liqueur brandy of Gledstane's is in such porous glass 
bottles — and so forth. Suppose Brutus had a footman, who 
came and told him that the butler drank the Cura^oa, v.'hich of 
these servants would you dismiss ? — the butler, perhaps, but the 
footman certainly. 

No. If your plate and glass are beautifully bright, your 
bell quickly answered, and Thomas ready, neat, and good- 
humored, you are not to expect absolute truth from him. The 
very obsequiousness and perfection of his service prevents 
truth. He may be ever so unwell in mind or body, and he 
must go through his service — hand the shining plate, replenish 
the spotless glass, lay the glittering fork — never laugh when 
you yourself or your guests joke — be profoundly attentive, and 
yet look utterly impassive — exchange a few hurried curses 



8 8 ROUND ABO UT PAPERS. 

at the door with that unseen slavey who ministers without, and 
with you be perfectly calm and polite. If you are ill, he 
will come twenty times in an hour to your bell ; or leave 
the girl of his heart — his mother, who is going to America 
— his dearest friend, who has come to say farewell — his 
lunch, and his glass of beer just freshly poured out — any or 
all of these, if the door-bell rings, or the master calls out 
" Thomas " from the hall. Do you suppose you can expect 
absolute candor from a man whom you may order to powder his 
hair.? As between the Rev. Henry Holyshade and his pupil 
the idea of entire unreserve is utter bosh ; so the truth as 
between you and Jeames or Thomas, or Mary the housemaid, 
or Betty the cook, is relative, and not to be demanded on one 
side or the other. Why, respectful civility is itself a lie, which 
poor Jeames often has to utter or perform to many a swagger- 
ing vulgarian, who should black Jeames's boots, did Jeames 
wear them and not shoes. There is your little Tom, just ten, 
ordering the great, large, quiet, orderly young man about — 
shrieking calls for hot water — bullying Jeames because the 
boots are not varnished enough, or ordering him to go to the 
stables, and ask Jenkins why the deuce Tomkins hasn't brought 
his pony round — or what you will. There is mamma rapping 
the knuckles of Pincot the lady's-maid, jind little Miss scolding 
Martha, who waits up five-pair of stairs in the nursery. Little 
Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha, from 
Pincot, from Jenkins, from Jeames, obsequious civility and 
willing service. My dear good people, you can't have truth 
too. Suppose you ask for your newspaper, and Jeames says, 
" I'm reading it, and jest beg not to be disturbed ;" or suppose 
you ask for a can of water, and he remarks, " You great, big, 
'ulking fellar, ain't you big enough to bring it hup yoursulf ? " 
what would your feelings be ? Now, if you made similar 
proposals or requests to Mr. Jones next door, this is the kind 
of answer Jones would give you. You get truth habitually 
from equals only ; so my good Mr. Holyshade, don't talk to me 
about the habitual candor of the young Etonian of high birth, 
or I have my own opinion of your candor or discernment 
when you do. No. Tom Bowling is the soul of honor and has 
been true to Black-eyed Syousan since the last time they 
parted at Wapping Old Stairs ; but do you suppose Tom is 
perfectly frank, familiar, and above-board in his conversation 
with Admiral Nelson, K. C. B. } There are secrets, prevarica- 
tions, fibs, if you will, between Tom and the Admiral — between 
your crew and their captain. I know I hire a worthy, clean, 



ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. 89 

agreeable, and conscientious male or female hypocrite, at so 
many guineas a year, to do so and so for me. Were he other 
than hypocrite I would send him about his business. Don't let 
my displeasure be too fierce with him for a fib or two on his 
own account. 

Some dozen years ago, my family being absent in a distant 
part of the country, and my business detaining me in London, 
I remained in my own house with three servants on board 
wages. I used only to breakfast at home ; and future ages will 
be interested to know that this meal used to consist, at that 
period, of tea, a penny roll, a pat of butter, and, perhaps, an 
^b?>- ^y weekly bill used invariably to be about fifty shillings, 
so that, as I never dined in the house, you see, my breakfast, 
consisting of the delicacies before mentioned, cost about seven 
shillings and threepence per diem. I must, therefore, have 
consumed daily — 

s. d, 

A quarter of a pound of tea (say) 
A penny roll (say) . ■ . 
One pound of butter (say) 
One pound of lump sugar . 
A new-laid egg . . . 



Which is the only possible way I have for making out the sum. 

Well, I fell ill while under this regimen, and had an illness 
which, but for a certain doctor, who was brought to me by a 
certain kind friend I had in those days, would I think, have 
prevented the possibility of my telling this interesting anecdote 
now a dozen years after. Don't be frightened, my dear 
madam ; it is not a horrid, sentimental account of a malady 
you are coming to — only a question of grocery. This illness, 
I say, lasted some seventeen days, during which the servants 
were admirably attentive and kind ; and poor John, especially, 
was up at all hours, watching night after night — amiable, 
cheerful, untiring, respectful, the very best of Johns and nurses. 

Twice or thrice in the seventeen days I may have had a 
glass of emc siicree — say a dozen glasses of eau sucree — certainly 
not more. Well, this admirable, watchful, cheerful, tender, af- 
fectionate John brought me in a little bill for seventeen pounds 
of sugar consumed during the illness — " Often 'ad sugar and 
water ; always was a callin' for it," says John, wagging his head 
quite gravely. You are dead, years and years ago. poor John — 
so patient, so friendly, so kind, so cheerful to the invalid in the 
fever. But confess, now, wherever you are, that seventeen 
pounds of sugar to make six glasses of eau sucree was a little 
too strong, wasn't it, John ! Ah, how frankly, how trustily, 



90 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



how bravely he hed, poor John ! One evening, being at Brigh- 
ton in the convalescence, I remember John's step was unsteady, 
his voice thick, his laugh queer — and having some quinine to 
give me, John brought the glass to me — not to my mouth, but 
struck me with it pretty smartly in the eye, which was not the 
way in which Dr. Elliotson had intended his prescription should 
be taken. Turning that eye upon him, I ventured to hint that 
my attendant had been drinking. Drinking ! I never was 
more humiliated at the thought of my own injustice than at 
John's reply. "Drinking! Sulp me ! I have had only one pint 
of beer with my dinner at one o'clock ! — and he retreats, holding 
on by a chair. These are fibs, you see, appertaining to the 
situation. John is drunk. " Snip him, he has only had an 
'alf-pint of beer with his dinner six hours ago ; " and none of 
his fellow-servants will say otherwise. Polly is smuggled on 
board ship. Who tells the lieutenant when he comes his rounds ? 
Boys are playing cards in the bedroom. The outlying fag 
announces master coming — out go candles — cards popped into 
bed — boys sound asleep. Who had that light in the dormitory } 
Law bless you ! the poor dear innocents are every one snoring. 
Every one snoring, and every snore is a lie told through the 
nose ! Suppose one of your boys or mine is engaged in that 
awful crime, are we going to break our hearts about it ? Come, 
come. We pull a long face, waggle a grave head, and chuckle 
within our waistcoat. 

Between me and those fellow-creatures of mine who are 
sitting in the room below, how strange and wonderful is the 
partition ! We meet at every hour of the daylight, and are 
indebted to each other for a hundred offices of duty and comfort 
•)f life ; and we live together for years, and don't know each 
other. John's voice to me is quite different from John's voice 
when it addresses his mates below. If I met Hannah in the 
street with a bonnet on, I doubt whether I should know her. 
And all these good people with whom I may live for years and 
years, have cares, interests, dear friends and relatives, mayhap 
schemes, passions, longing hopes, tragedies of their own, from 
which a carpet and a few planks and beams utterly separate 
me. When we were at the seaside, and poor Ellen used to 
look so pale, and run after the postman's bell, and seize a letter 
in a great scrawling hand, and read it, and cry in a corner, how 
should we know that the poor little thing's heart was breaking ? 
She fetched the water, and she smoothed the ribbons, and she 
laid out the dresses, and brought the early cup of tea in the 
morning, just as if she had had no cares to keep her awake. 



ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. 91 

Henry (who lived out of the house) was the servant of a friend 
of mine who lived in chambers. There was a dinner one day, 
and Henry waited all through the dinner. The champagne 
was properly iced, the dinner was excellently served ; every 
guest was attended to j the dinner disappeared ; the dessert 
was set ; the claret was in perfect order, carefully decanted, 
and more ready. And then Henry said, " If you please, sir, 
may I go home 1 " He had received word that his house was 
on fire ; and, having seen through his dinner, he wished to go 
and look after his children, and little sticks of furniture. Why, 
such a man's livery is a uniform of honor. The crest on his 
button is a badge of bravery. 

Do you see — I imagine I do myself — in these little instances, 
a tinge of humor ? Ellen's heart is breaking for handsome 
Jeames of Buckley Square, whose great legs are kneeling, and 
who has given a lock of his precious powdered head, to some 
other than Ellen. Henry is preparing the sauce for his mister's 
wild ducks, while the engines are squirting over his own little 
nest and brood. Lift these figures up but a story from the 
basement to the ground-floor, and the fun is gone. We may be 
en pleine tragcdie. Ellen may breathe her last sigh in blank 
verse, calling down blessings upon Jeames the profligate who 
deserts her. Henry is a hero, and epaulettes are on his shoul- 
ders. Atqid sciebat, &c., whatever tortures are in store for him, 
he will be at his post of duty. 

You concede, however, that there is a touch of humor in 
the two tragedies here mentioned. Why ? Is it that the idea 
of persons at service is somehow ludicrous ? Perhaps it is 
made more so in this country by the splendid appearance of 
the liveried domestics of great people. When you think that 
we dress in black ourselves, and put our fellow-creatures in 
green, pink, or canary-colored breeches ; that we order them to 
plaster their hair with flour, having brushed that nonsense out 
of our own heads fifty years ago ; that some of the most gen- 
teel and stately among us cause the men who drive their car- 
riages to put on little Albino wigs, and sit behind great nose- 
gays — I say I suppose it is this heaping of gold lace, gaudy 
colors, blooming plushes, on honest John Trot, which makes 
the man absurd in our eyes, who need be nothing but a simple 
reputable citizen and in-door laborer. Suppose, my dear sir, 
that you yourself were suddenly desired to put on a full dress, 
or even undress, domestic uniform with our friend Jones's 
crest repeated in varied combinations of button on your front 
and back ? Suppose, madam, your son were told, that he could 



92 



ROUN-DABOUT PAPERS. 



not get out except in lower garments of carnation or amber- 
colored plush — would you let him ? * * * But as you justly say, 
this is not the question, and besides it is a question fraught 
with danger, sir ; and radicalism, sir ; and subversion of the 
very foundations of the social fabric, sir. * * * Well, John, we 
won't enter on your great domestic question. Don't let us dis- 
port with Jeames's dangerous strength, and the edge-tools 
about his knife-board : but with Betty and Susan who wield the 
playful mop, and set on the simmering kettle. Surely you have 
heard Mrs. Toddles talking to Mrs, Doddles about their mutual 
maids. Miss Susan must have a silk gown, and Miss Betty 
must wear flowers under her bonnet when she goes to church 
if you please, and did you ever hear such impudence ? The 
servant in many small establishments is a constant and end- 
Jess theme of talk. What small wage, sleep, meal, what end- 
less scouring, scolding, tramping on messages fall to that poor 
Susan's lot ; what indignation at the little kindly passing word 
with the grocer's young man, the pot-boy, the chubby butcher ! 
Where such things will end, my dear Mrs. Toddles, I don't 
know. What wages they will want next, my dear Mrs. Doddles, 
&c. 

Here, dear ladies, is an advertisement which I cut out of 
The Times a few days since, expressly for you : 

n A LADY is desirous of obtaining a SITUATION for a very respectable young 
-'*■ woman as HEAD KITCHEN-MAID under a man-cook. She has lived four 
years under a very good cook and housekeeper. Can make ice, and is an excellent baker. 
She will only take a place in a very good family, where she can have the opportunity of 
improving herself, and, if possible, staying for two years. Apply by letter to," &c., &c. 

There, Mrs. Toddles, what do you think of that, and did 
you ever ? Well, no, Mrs. Doddles. Upon my word now, Mrs. 
T., I don't think I ever did. A respectable young woman — as 
head kitchen-maid — under a man-cook, will only take a place 
in a very good family, where she can improve, and stay two 
years. Just note up the conditions, Mrs. Toddles, mum, if you 
please, mum, and then let us see : — 

1. This young woman is to be head kitcnen-maid, that is to 

say, there is to be a chorus of kitchen-maids, of which 
Y. W. is to be chief. 

2. She will only be situated under a man-cook. (A) Ought 

he to be a French cook ; and (B), if so, would the lady 
desire him to be a Protestant ? 



ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. 03 

3 She will only take a place in a very good family. How old 
ought the family to be, and what do you call good ? that 
is the question. How long after the Conquest will do ? 
Would a banker's family do, or is a baronet's good 
enough ? Best say what rank in the peerage would be 
sufficiently high. But the lady does not say whether 
she would like a High Church or a Low Church family. 
Ought there to be unmarried sons, and may they follow 
a profession ? and please say how many daughters ; and 
would the lady like them to be musical ? And how 
many company dinners a week ? Not too many, for fear 
of fatiguing the upper kitchen-maid ; but sufficient, so as 
to keep the upper kitchen-maid's hand in. [N.B. — I 
think I can see a rather bewildered expression on the 
countenances of Mesdames Doddles and Toddles as I 
am prattling on in this easy bantering way.] 

4. The head kitchen-maid wishes to stay for two years, and 
improve herself under the man-cook, and having of 
course sucked the brains (as the phrase is) from under 
the chef's nightcap, then the head kitchen-maid wishes 
to go. 

And upon my word, Mrs. Toddles, mum, I will go and fetch 
the cab for her. The cab .'' Why not her ladyship's own car- 
riage and pair, and the head coachman to drive away the head 
kitchen-maid ? You see she stipulates for everything — the time 
to come ; the time to stay ; the family she will be with ; and as 
soon as she has improved herself enough, of course the upper 
kitchen-maid will step into the carriage and drive off. 

Well, upon my word and conscience, if things are coming 
to this pass, Mrs. Toddles and Mrs. Doddles, mum, I think I 
will go up stairs and get a basin and a sponge, and then down 
stairs and get some hot water ; and then I will go and scrub 
that chalk-mark off my own door with my own hands. 

It is wiped off, I declare ! After ever so many weeks ! Who 
has done it ? It was just a little round-about mark, you know, 
and it was there for days and weeks, before I ever thought it 
would be the text of a Roundabout Paper, 



54 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS 



ON BEING FOUND OUT. 

At the close (let us say) of Queen Anne's rei^n, when I was 
a boy at a private and preparatory school for young gentlemen, 
I remember the wiseacre of a master ordering us all, one night, 
to march into a little garden at the back of the house, and 
thence to proceed one by one into a tool or hen-house, (I was 
but a tender little thing just put into short clothes, and can't 
exactly say whether the house was for tools or hens,) and in 
that house to put our hands into a sack which stood on a bench, 
a candle burning beside it. I put my hand into the sack. My 
hand came out quite black. I went and joined the other boys 
in the school-room ; and all their hands were black too. 

By reason of my tender age (and there are some critics who, 
I hope, will be satisfied by my acknowledging that I am a hun- 
dred and fifty-six next birthday) I could not understand what 
was the meaning of this night excursion — this candle, this tool- 
house, this bag of soot. I think we little boys were taken out 
of our sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We came, then, and 
showed our little hands to the master ; washed them or not — 
most probably, I should say, not — and so went bewildered back 
to bed. 

Something had been stolen in the school that day ; and Mr. 
Wiseacre having read in a book of an ingenious method of find- 
ing out a thief by making him put his hand into a sack (which, 
if guilty, the rogue would shirk from doing), all we boys were 
subject to the trial. Goodness knows what the lost object was, 
or who stole it. We all had black hands to show to the master. 
And the thief, whoever he was, was not Found Out that time. 

I wonder if the rascal is alive — an elderly scoundrel he 
must be by this time ; and a hoary old hypocrite, to whom an old 
school-fellow presents his kindest regards — parenthetically re- 
marking what a dreadful place that private school was ; cold, 
chilblains, bad dinners, not enough victuals, and caning awful ! 
— Are you alive still, I say, you nameless villain, who escaped 
discovery on that day of crime ? I hope you have escaped 
often since, old sinner. Ah, what a lucky thing it is, for you 
and me, my man, that we are not found out in all our peccadil- 
loes ; and that our backs can slip away from the master and the 
cane ! 

Just consider what life would be, if every rogue was found 



ON BEING FOUND OUT. 



95 



out, and flogged coram populo ! What a butchery, what an in- 
decency, what an endless swishing of the rod ! Don't cry out 
about my misanthropy. My good friend Mealymouth, I will 
trouble you to tell me, do you go to church ? When there, do 
you say, or do you not, tliat you are a miserable sinner ? and 
saying so, do you believe or disbelieve it ? If you are a M. S., 
don't you deserve correction, and aren't you grateful if you are 
to be let off ? I say again, what a blessed thing it is that we 
are not all found out ! 

Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being 
found out, and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in 
all the school being whipped ; and then the assistants, and then 
the head master (Dr. Badford let us call him). Fancy the pro- 
vost-marshal being tied up, having previously superintended the 
correction of the whole army. After the young gentlemen have 
had their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr. Lincolnsinn 
being taken up for certain faults in his Essay and Review. 
After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, suppose we hoist up 
a bishop, and give him a couple of dozen ! (I see my Lord 
Bishop of Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture on 
his right reverend bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, 
what are we to say to the Minister who appointed him ? My 
Lord Cinqwarden, it is painful to have to use personal correc- 
tion to a boy of your age ; but really * * * Sisfe ta7uiem^ car- 
nifex ! The butchery is too horrible. The hand drops power- 
less, appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and 
brandish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again ; 
and protest, my dear brethren, against our having our deserts. 

To fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough ; 
but imagine all women found out in the distinguished social 
circle in which you and I have the honor to move. Is it not 
a mercy that a many of these fair criminals remain unpunished 
and undiscovered } There is Mrs. Longbow, who is forever 
practising, and who shoots poisoned arrows, too ; when you 
meet her you don't call her liar, and charge her with the wicked- 
ness she has done, and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who 
passes for a most respectable woman, and a model in society. 
There is no use in saying what you really know regarding her 
and her goings on. There is Diana Hunter — what a little 
haughty prude she is ; and yet we know stories about her which 
are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of 
the good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't 
want your children to know the history of that lady in the next 
box, who is so handsome, and whom they admire so. Ah me, 



g6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

what would life be if we were all found out, and punished for 
all our faults ? Jack Ketch would be in permanence ; and then 
who would hang Jack Ketch ? 

They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out. 
Psha ! I have heard an authority awfully competent vow and 
declare that scores and hundreds of murders are committed, 
and nobody is the wiser. That terrible man mentioned one or 
two ways of committing murder, which he maintained were quite 
common, and were scarcely ever found out. A man, for in- 
stance, comes home to his wife, and * * * but I pause — I know 
that this Magazine has a very large circulation. Hundreds and 
hundreds of thousands — why not say a million of people at 
once ? — well, say a million, read it. And among these count- 
less readers, I might be teaching some monster how to make 
away with his wife without being found out, some fiend of a 
woman how to destroy her dear husband. I will not then tell 
this easy and simple way of murder, as communicated to me by 
a most respectable party in the confidence of private inter- 
course. Suppose some gentle reader were to try this most 
simple and easy receipt — it seems to me almost infallible — and 
come to grief in consequence, and be found out and hanged "i 
Should I ever pardon myself for having been the means of do- 
ing injury to a single one of our esteemed subscribers } The 
prescription whereof I speak — that is to say, whereof I don^t 
speak — shall be buried in this bosom. No, I am a humane 
man. I am not one of your Bluebeards to go and say to my 
wife, " My dear ! I am going away for a few days to Brighton. 
Here are all the keys of the house. You may open every door 
and closet, except the one at the end of the oak-room opposite 
the fireplace, with the little bronze Shakspeare on the mantel- 
piece (or what not)." I don't say this to a woman — unless, to 
be sure, I want to get rid of her — because, after such a caution, 
I know she'll peep into the closet. I say nothing about the 
closet at all. I keep the key in my pocket, and a being whom 
I love, lut who, as I know, has many weaknesses, out of harm's 
way. You toss up your head, dear angel, drub on the ground 
with your lovely little feet, on the table with your sweet rosy 
fingers, and cry, *' Oh, sneerer ! You don't know the depth of 
woman's feeling, the lofty scorn of all deceit, the entire absence of 
mean curiosity in the sex, or never, never would you libel us so ! " 
Ah, Delia ! dear, dear Delia ! It is because I fancy I do know some- 
thing about you (not all, mind — no, no ; no man knows that) — 
Ah, my bride, my ringdove, my rose, my poppet — choose, in 
fact, whatever name you like — bulbul of my grove, fountain of 



ON BEING FOUND OUT. 



97 



my desert, sunshine of my darkling life, and joy of my dun- 
geoned existence, it is because I do l<:now a little about you that 
I conclude to say nothing of that private closet, and keep my 
key in my pocket. You take away that closet-key then, and 
the house-key. You lock Delia in. You keep her out of 
harm's way and gadding, and so she never can be found out. 

And yet by little strange accidents and coincidents how we 
are being found out every day. You remember that old story 
of the Abbe Kakatoes, who told the company at supper one 
night how the first confession he ever received was — from 
a murderer let us say. Presently enters to supper the Marquis 
de Croquemitaine. " Palsambleu, abbe ! " says the brilliant 
marquis, taking a pinch of snuff, " are you here ? Gentlemen 
and ladies ! I was the abbe's first penitent, and I made him 
a confession which I promise you astonished him." 

To be sure how queerly things are found out ! Here is an 
instance. Only the other day I was writing in these Round- 
about Papers about a certain man, whom I facetiously called 
Baggs, and who had abused me to my friends, who of course 
told me. Shortly after that paper was published another 
friend — Sacks let us call him — scowls fiercely at me as I am 
sitting in perfect good-humor at the club, and passes on without 
speaking. A cut. A quarrel. Sacks thinks it is about him that 
I was writing: whereas, upon my honor and conscience, I never 
had him once in my mind, and was pointing my moral from 
quite another man. But don't you see, by this wrath of the 
guilty-conscienced Sacks, that he had been abusing me too ? " 
He has owned himself guilty, never having been accused. He 
has winced when nobody thought of hitting him, I did but 
put the cap out, and madly butting and chafing, behold my 
friend rushes to put his head into it ! Never mind, Sacks, you 
are found out ; but I bear you no malice, my man. 

And yet to be found out, I know from my own experience, 
must be painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the in- 
ward vanity. Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With 
fierce moustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense 
stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear 
fearfully at cabmen and women ; brandish my bludgeon, and 
perhaps knock down a little man or two with it : brag of the 
images which I break at the shooting-gallery, and pass amongst 
my friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid of neither man nor 
dragon. Ah me ! Suppose some brisk little chap steps up, 
and gives me a caning in St. James's Street, with all the heads, 
of my friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputa- 

7 



^8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

tion is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by 
whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am 
found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people 
were yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I 
always knew that I was a lily-liver, and expected that I should 
be found out some day. 

That certainty of being found out must haunt and depress 
many a bold braggadocio spirit. Let us say it is a clergj'man, 
who can pump copious floods of tears out of his own eyes and 
those of his audience. He thinks to himself, " I am but a 
poor swindling, chattering rogue. My bills are unpaid. I 
have jilted several women whom I have promised to marry. 
I don't know whether I believe what I preach, and I know 
I have stolen the very sermon over which I have been snivel- 
ling. Have they found me out ? " says he, as his head drops 
down on the cushion. 

Then your writer, poet, historian, novelist, or what not } 
The Beacon says that "Jones's work is one of the first order." 
The Zrt-w/ declares that "Jones's tragedy surpasses every work 
since the days of Him of Avon." The Ci?;//^/ asserts that " J.'s 
' Life of Goody Twoshoes ' is a xrrj/ia tq as), a noble and en- 
during monument to the fame of that admirable Engiish- 
woman," and so forth. But then Jones knows that he has 
lent the critic of the Beacon five pounds ; that his publisher 
has a half share in the Lamp ; and that the Comet comes re- 
peatedly to dine with him. It is all very well. Jones is im- 
mortal' until he is found out ; and then down comes the ex- 
tinguisher, and the immortal is dead and buried. The idea 
{dies ircB f) of discovery must haunt many a man, and make him 
uneasy, as the trumpets are puffing in his triumph. Brown, 
who has a higher place than he deserves, cowers before 
Smith, who has found him out. What is a chorus of critics 
shouting "Bravo?" — a public clapping hands and flinging 
garlands ? Brown knows that Smith has found him out. Puff, 
trumpets ! Wave, banners ! Huzza, boys, for the immortal 
Brown ! " This is all very well," B. thinks (bowing the while, 
smiling, laying his hand to his heart) ; " but there stands 
Smith at the windows : he has measured me ; and some day 
the others will find me out too." It is a very curious sensation 
to sit by a man who has found you out, and who, as you know, 
has found you out ; or, vice versd, to sit with a man whom 
you have found out. His talent ? Bah ! His virtue ? We 
know a little story or two about his virtue, and he knows we 
know it. We are thinking over friend Robinson's antecedents, 



ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. 



99 



as we grin, bow and talk ; and we are both humbugs together. 
Robinson a good fellow, is he ? You know how he behaved to 
Hicks ? A good-natured man, is he ? Pray do you remember 
that little story of Mrs. Robinson's black eye ? How men have 
to work, to talk, to smile, to go to bed, and try and sleep, 
with this dread of being found out on their consciences ! Bar- 
dolph, who has robbed a church, and Nym, who has taken a 
purse, go to their usual haunts, and smoke their pipes with 
their companions. Mr. Detective Bullseye appears, and says 
" Oh, Bardolph ! I want you about that there pyx business ! " 
Mr. Bardolph knocks the ashes out of his pipe, puts out his 
hands to the little steel cuffs, and walks away quite meekly. 
He is found out. He must go. " Good-by, Doll Tearsheet ! 
Good-by, Mrs. Quickly, ma'am ! " The other gentlemen and 
ladies de la societe look on and exchange mute adieux with the 
departing friends. And an assured time will come when the 
other gentlemen and ladies will be found out too. 

What a wonderful and beautiful provision of nature it has 
been that, for the most part, our womankind are not endowed 
with the faculty of finding us out ! They don't doubt, and 
probe, and weigh, and take your measure. Lay down this 
paper, my benevolent friend and reader, go into your drawing- 
room now, and utter a joke ever so old, and I wager sixpence 
the ladies there will all begin to laugh. Go to Brown's house, 
and tell Mrs. Brown and the young ladies what you think of 
him, and see what a welcome you will get ! In like manner, 
let him come to your house, and tell your good lady his candid 
opinion of you, and fancy how she will receive him Would 
you have your wife and children know you exactly for what 
you are, and esteem you precisely at your worth ? If so, my 
friend, you will live in a dreary house, and you will have but a 
chilly fireside. Do you suppose the people round it don't see 
your homely face as under a glamor, and, as it were, with a 
halo of love round it ? You don't fancy you are^ as you seem 
to them ? No such thing, my man. Put away that monstrous 
conceit, and be thankful that they have not found you out. 



ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE, 

Here have I just read of a game played at a country 
house ? The party assembles round a table with pens, ink, 
and paper. Some one narrates a tale containing more or less 



lOO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

incidents and personages. Each person of the company then 
writes down, to the best of his memory and ability, the anec- 
dote just narrated, and finally the papers are to be read out 
I do not say I should like to play often at this game, which 
might possibly be a tedious and lengthy pastime, not by any 
means sa amusing as smoking a cigar in the conservatory ; or 
even listening to the young ladies playing their piano-pieces ; 
or to Hobbs and Nobbs lingering round the bottle and talking 
over the morning's run with the hounds ; but surely it is a 
moral and ingenious sport. They say the variety of narratives 
is often very odd and amusing. The original story becomes 
so changed and distorted that at the end of all the statements 
you are puzzled to know where the truth is at all. As time 
is of small importance to the cheerful persons engaged in this 
sport, perhaps a good way of playing it would be to spread it 
over a couple of years. Let the people who played the game 
in '60 all meet and play it once more in '61, and each write his 
story over again. Then bring out your original and compare 
notes. Not only will the stories differ from each other, but the 
writers will probably differ from themselves. In the course of 
the year incidents will grow or will dwindle strangely. The 
least authentic of the statements will be so lively or so mali- 
cious, or so neatly put, that it will appear most like the truth. 
I like these tales and sportive exercises. I had begun a little 
print collection once. I had Addison in his nightgown in bed at 
Holland House, requesting young Lord Warwick to remark 
how a Christian should die. I had Cambronne clutching his 
cocked-hat, and uttering the immortal /c? Garde meiirt et ?te se 
re?id pas. I had the " Vengeur " going down, and all the crew 
hurrying like madmen. I had Alfred toasting the muffin; 
Curtius (Haydon) jumping into the gulf; with extracts from 
Napoleon's bulletins, and a fine authentic portrait of Baron 
Munchausen. 

What man who has been before the public at all has not 
heard similar wonderful anecdotes regarding himself and his 
own history } In these humble essaykins I have taken leave 
to egotize. I cry out about the shoes which pinch ^me, as I 
fancy, more naturally and pathetically than if my neighbor's 
corns were trodden under foot. I prattle about the dish which 
I love, the wine which I like, the talk I heard yesterday — about 
Brown's absurd airs — Jones's ridiculous elation when he thinks 
he has caught me in a blunder (a part of the fun, you see, is 
that Jones will read this, and will perfectly well know that I 
mean him, and that we shall meet and grin at each other with 



ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. joi 

entire politeness). This is not the highest kind of speculation, 
I confess, but it is agossip which amuses some folks. A brisk 
and honest small-beer will refresh those who do not care for 
the frothy outpouring of heavier taps. A two of clubs may be 
a good, handy little card sometimes, and able to tackle a kind of 
diamonds, if it is a little trump. Some philosophers get their 
wisdom with deep thought and out of ponderous libraries ; I 
pick up my small crumbs of cognition at a dinner-table ; or 
from Mrs. Mary and Miss Louisa, as they are prattling over 
their five-o'clock tea. 

Well, yesterday at dinner Jucundus was good enough to 
tell me a story about myself, which he had heard f .-om a lady of 
his acquaintance, to whom I send my best compliments. The 
tale is this. At nine o'clock on the evening of the 31st of 
November last, just before sunset, I was seen leaving No. 96 
Abbey Road, St. John's Wood, leading two little children by 
the hand, one of them in a nankeen pelisse, and the other having 
a mole on the third finger of his left hand (she thinks it was 
the third finger, but is quite sure it was the left hand). Thence I 
walked with them to Charles Boroughbridge's, pork and sausage 
man, No. 29 Upper Theresa Road. Here, whilst I left the little 
girl innocently eating a polony in the front shop, I and Borough- 
bridge retired with the boy into the back parlor, where Mrs. 
Boroughbridge was playing cribbage. She put up the cards 
and boxes, took out a chopper and a napkin, and we cut the little 
boy's little throat (which he bore with great pluck and resolution), 
and made him into sausage-meat by the aicl of Purkis's excellent 
sausage-machine. The little girl at first could not understand 
her brother's absence, but, under the pretence of taking her to 
see Mr. Fechter in Hamlet., I led her down to the New River at 
Sadler's Wells, where a body of a child in a nankeen pelisse 
was subsequently found, and has never been recognized to 
the present day. And this Mrs. Lynx can aver, because she 
saw the whole transaction with her own eyes, as she told Mr. 
Jucundus. 

I have altered the little details of the anecdote somewhat. 
But this story is, I vow and declare, as true as Mrs. Lynx's. 
Gracious goodness ! how do lies begin ? What are the averages 
of lying ? Is the same amount of lies told about every man, and 
do we pretty much all tell the same amount of lies ? Is the aver- 
age greater in Ireland than Scotland, or vice versa — among women 
than among men ? Is this a lie I am telling now ? If I am talking 
about you, the odds are, perhaps, that it is. I look back at some 
which have been told about me, and speculate on them with 



102 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

thanks and wonder. Dear friends have told them of me, have 
told them to me of myself. Have they not to and of you, dear 
friend ? A friend of mine was dining at a large dinner of clergy 
men, and a story, as true as the sausage story above given, was 
told regarding me, by one of those reverend divines, in whose 
frocks sit some anile chatterboxes, as any man who knows this 
world knows. They take the privilege of their gown. They 
cabal, and tattle, and hiss, and cackle comminations under their 
breath. I say the old women of the other sex are not more talk- 
ative or more mischievous than some of these. " Such a man 
ought not to be spoken to," says Gobemouche, narrating the 
story — and such a story ! "And I am surprised he is admitted 
into society at all." Yes, dear Gobemouche, but the story wasn't 
true ; and I had no more done the wicked deed in question than 
I had run away with the Queen of Sheba. 

I have always longed to know what that story was (or what 
collection of histories), which a lady had in her mind to whom a 
servant of mine applied for a place, when I was breaking up my 
establishment once, and going abroad. Brown went with a very 
good character from us, which, indeed, she fully deserved after 
several years' faithful service. But when Mrs. Jones read the 
name of the person out of whose employment Brown came, 
"That is quite sufficient," says Mrs. Jones. "You may go. I 
will never take a servant out of that house." Ah Mrs. Jones, 
how I should like to know what that crime was, or what that 
series of villanies, which made you determine never to take a 
servant out of my house. Do you believe in the story of the 
little boy and the sausages t Have you swallowed that little 
minced infant ? Have you devoured that young Polonius ? 
Upon my word you have maw enough. We somehow greedily 
gobble down all stories in which the characters of our friends 
are chopped up, and believe wrong of them without inquiry. 
In a late serial work written by this hand, I remember making 
some pathetic remarks about our propensity to believe ill of 
our neighbors — and I remember the remarks, not because they 
were valuable, or novel, or ingenious, but because, within three 
days after they had appeared in print, the moralist who wrote 
them, walking home with a friend, heard a story about another 
friend, which story he straightway believed, and which story 
was scarcely more true than that sausage fable which is here 
set down. O mea culpa, mea maxima culpa I But though the 
preacher trips, shall not the doctrine be good ? Yea, brethren ! 
Here be the rods. Look you, here are the scourges. Choose 
me a nice long, swishing, buddy one, light and well-poised in 



ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. 



103 



the handle, thick and bushy at the tail. Pick me out a whip- 
cord thong with some dainty knots in it — and now — we all de- 
serve it — whish, whish, whish ! Let us cut into each other all 
round. 

A favorite liar and servant of mine was a man I once had 
to drive a brougham. He never came to my house, except for 
orders, and once when he helped to wait at dinner so clumsily 
that it was agreed we would dispense with his further efforts. 
The (job) brougham horse used to look dreadfully lean and 
tired, and the livery-stable keeper complained that we worked 
him too hard. Now, it turned out that there was a neighbor- 
ing butcher's lady who liked to ride in a brougham ; and Tom- 
kins lent her ours, drove her cheerfully to Richmond and Put- 
ney, and, I suppose, took out a payment in mutton-chops. We 
gave this good Tomkins wine and medicine for his family when 
sick — we supplied him with little comforts and extras which 
need not now be remembered — and the grateful creature re- 
warded us by informing some of our tradesmen whom he hon- 
ored with his custom, " Mr. Roundabout ? Lor' bless you ! I 
carry him up to bed drunk every night in the week." He, 
Tomkins, being a man of seven stone weight and five feet high ; 
whereas his employer was — but here modesty interferes, and I 
decline to enter into the avoirdupois question. 

Now, what was Tomkins' motive for the utterance and dis- 
semination of these lies .'' They could further no conceivable 
end or interest of his own. Had they been true stories, Tom- 
kins' master would still, and reasonably, have been more angry 
than at the fables. It was but suicidal slander on the part of 
Tomkins — must come to a discovery — must end in a punish- 
ment. The poor wretch had got his place under, as it turned 
out, a fictitious character. He might have stayed in it, for of 
course Tomkins had a wife and poor innocent children. He might 
have had bread, beer, bed, character, coats, coals. He might 
have nestled in our Uttle island, comfortably sheltered from 
the storms of life ; but we were compelled to cast him out, and 
send him driving, lonely, perishing, tossing, starving, to sea — 
to drown. To drown .-" There be other modes of death where- 
by rogues die. Goodby, Tomkins. And so the nightcap is put 
on, and the bolt is drawn for poor T. 

.Suppose we were to invite volunteers amongst our respected 
readers to send in little statements of the lies which they know 
have been told about themselves ; what a heap of correspond- 
ence, what an exaggeration of malignities, what a crackling 
bonfire of incendiary falsehoods, might we not gather together ! 



I04 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



And a lie once set going, having the breath of life breathed 
into it by the father of lying, and ordered to run its diabolical 
little course, lives with a prodigious vitality. You say, " Magna 
est Veritas et prcevalebit." Psha! Great lies are as great as 
great truths, and prevail constantly, and day after day. Take 
an instance or two out of my own little budget. I sit near a 
gentleman at dinner, and the conversation turns upon a certain 
anonymous literary performance which at the time is amusing 
the town. " Oh," says the gentleman, " everybody knows who 
wrote that paper : it is Momus's." I was a young author at 
the time, perhaps proud of my bantling: "I beg your pardon," 
I say, " it was written by your humble servant." " Indeed !" 
was all that the man replied, and he shrugged his shoulders, 
turned his back, and talked to his other neighbor. 1 never 
heard sarcastic incredulity more finely conveyed than by that 
"Indeed." "Impudent liar," the gentleman's face said, as 
clear as face could speak. Where was Magna Veritas, and how 
did she prevail then ? She lifted up her voice, she made her 
appeal, and she was kicked out of court. In New York I read 
a newspaper criticism one day (by an exile from our shores who 
has taken up his abode in the Western Republic), commenting 
upon a letter of mine which had appeared in a contemporary 
volume, and wherein it was stated that the writer was a lad in 
such and such a year, and, in point of fact, I was, at the period 
spoken of, nineteen years of age. " Falsehood, Mr. Rounda- 
bout," says the noble critic : " you were then not a lad ; you 
were then six-and-twenty years of age." You see he knew 
better than papa and mamma and parish register. It was 
easier for him to think and say I lied, on a twopenny matter 
connected with my own affairs, than to imagine he was mis- 
taken. Years ago, in a time when we were very mad wags, Arc- 
turus and myself met a gentleman from China who knew the lan- 
guage. We began to speak Chinese against him. We said we 
were born in China. We were two to one. We spoke the man- 
darin dialect with perfect fluency. We had the company with 
us ; as in the old, old days, the squeak of the real pig was voted 
not to be so natural as the squeak of the sham pig. O Arc- 
turus, the sham pig squeaks in our streets now to the applause 
of multitudes, and the real porker grunts unheeded in his sty ! 

I once talked for some little time with an amiable lady : it 
was for the first time : and I saw an expression of surprise on 
her kind face, which said as plainly as face could say, " Sir, do 
you know that up to this moment I have had a certain opinion 
of you, and that I begin to think I have been mistaken or mis« 



ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. 



I OS 



led ? " I not only know that she had heard evil reports of me, 
but I know who told her — one of those acute fellows, my dear 
brethren, of whom we spoke in a previous sermon, who has 
found me out — found out actions which I never did, found out 
thoughts and sayings which I never spoke, and judged me 
accordingly. Ah, my lad ! have I found you out ? O ristim 
teneatis. Perhaps the person I am accusing is no more guilty 
than I. 

How comes it that the evil which men say spreads so widely 
and lasts so long, whilst our good, kind words don't seem some- 
how to take root and bear blossom ? Is it that in the stony 
hearts of mankind these pretty flowers can't find a place to 
grow ? Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas 
praise of one's neighbor is by no means lively hearing. An 
acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard 
and cayenne pepper, excites the appetite ; whereas a slice of 
cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat. 

Now, such being the case, my dear worthy Mrs. Candor, in 
whom I know there are a hundred good and generous qualities : 
it being perfectly clear that the good things which we say of our 
neighbors don't fructify, but somehow perish in the ground 
where they are dropped, whilst the evil words are wafted by 
all the winds of scandal, take root in all soils, and flourish 
amazingly — seeing, I say, that this conversation does not give 
us a fair chance, suppose we give up censoriousness altogether, 
and decline uttering our opinions about Brown, Jones, and 
Robinson (and Mesdames B., J., and R.) at all. We may be 
mistaken about every one of them, as, please goodness, those 
anecdote-mongers against whom I have uttered my meek pro- 
test have been mistaken about me. We need not go to the 
extent of saying that Mrs. Manning was an amiable creature, 
much misunderstood ; and Jack Thurtell a gallant, unfortunate 
fellow, not near so black as he was painted ; but we will try and 
avoid personalities altogether in talk, won't we ? We will range 
the fields of science, dear madam, and communicate to each 
other the pleasing results of our studies. We will, if you please, 
examine the infinitesimal wonders of nature through the micro- 
scope. We will cultivate entomology. We will sit with our 
arms round each other's waists on the pons asinorum, and see 
the stream of mathematics flow beneath. We will take refuge 
in cards, and play at "beggar my neighbor," not abuse my 
neighbor. We will go to the Zoological Gardens and talk freely 
about the gorilla and his kindred, but not talk about people who 
can talk in their turn. Suppose we praise the High Church ? 



Io6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

we offend the Low Church. The Broad Church ? High and 
Low are both offended. What do you think of Lord Derby as 
a pohtician ? And what is your opinion of Lord Pahnerston ? 
If you please, will you play me those lovely variations of " In 
my cottage near a wood ? " It is a charming air (you know it 
in French, I suppose ? Ah ! te dirai-je 7naniaii !) and was a 
favorite with poor Marie Antoinette. I say "poor," because I 
have a right to speak with pity of a sovereign who was renowned 
for so much beauty and so much misfortune. But as forgiving 
any opinion on her conduct, saying that she was good or bad, 
or indifferent, goodness forbid ! We have agreed we will not 
be censorious. Let us have a game at cards — at e'carte, if you 
please. You deal. I ask for cards. I lead the deuce of 
clubs. * * * 

What ? there is no deuce ! Deuce take it ! What ? People 
will go on talking about their neighbors, and won't have their 
mouths stopped by cards, or ever so much microscopes and 
aquariums ? Ah, my poor dear Mrs. Candor, I agree with you. 
By the way, did you ever see anything like Lady Godiva 
Trotter's dress last night ? People 7i)ill go on chattering, 
although we hold our tongues ; and, after all, my good soul, 
what will their scandal matter a hundred years hence ? 



SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. 

Not long since, at a certain banquet, I had the good fortune 
to sit by Doctor Polymathesis, who knows everything, and who, 
about the time when the claret made its appearance, mentioned 
that old dictum of the grumbling Oxford Don, that "All 
Claret would be port if it could .f'' Imbibing a bumper of one 
or the other not ungratefully, I thought to myself, " Here surely, 
Mr. Roundabout, is a good text for one of your reverence's 
sermons." Let us apply to the human race, dear brethren, 
what is here said of the vintages of Portugal and Gascony, and 
we shall have no difficulty in perceiving how many clarets as- 
pire to the ports in their way ; how most men and women of our 
acquaintance, how we ourselves, are Aquitanians giving our- 
selves Lusitanian airs ; how we wish to have credit for being 
stronger, braver, more beautiful, more worthy than we really 
are. 



SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. 



107 



Nay, the beginning of this hypocrisy — a desire to excel, a 
desire to be hearty, fruity, generous, strength- imparting — is a 
virtuous and noble ambition ; and it is most difficult for a man 
in his own case, or his neighbor's, to say at what point this 
ambition transgresses the boundary of virtue, and becomes 
vanity, pretence, and self-seeking. You are a poor man, let us 
say, showing a bold face to adverse fortune, and wearing a confi- 
dent aspect. Your purse is very narrow, but you owe no man 
a penny ; your means are scanty, but your wife's gown is decent ; 
your old coat well brushed ; your children at a good school ; 
you grumble to no one \ ask favors of no one ; truckle to no 
neighbors on account of their superior rank, or (a worse, and a 
meaner, and a more common crime still) envy none for their 
better fortune. To all outward appearances you are as well to 
do as your neighbors, who have thrice your income. There 
may be in this case some little mixture of pretension in your life 
and behavior. You certainly do put on a smiling face whilst 
fortune is pinching you. Your wife and girls, so smart and 
neat at evening-parties, are cutting, patching, and cobbling all 
day to make both ends of life's haberdashery meet. You give 
a friend a bottle of wine on occasion, but are content yourself 
with a glass of whiskey-and-water. You avoid a cab, saying that 
of all things you like to walk home after dinner (which you 
know, my good friend, is a fib). I grant you that in this 
scheme of life there does enter ever so little hypocrisy ; that 
this claret is loaded, as it were ; but your desire to fortify your- 
self is amiable, is pardonable, is perhaps honorable : and were 
there no other hypocrisies than yours in the world we should 
be a set of worthy fellows ; and sermonizers, moralizers, satiri- 
zers, would have to hold their tongues, and go to some other 
trade to get a living. 

But you know you will step over that boundary line of 
virtue and modesty, into the district where humbug and vanity 
begin, and there the moralizer catches you and makes an exam- 
ple of you. For instance, in a certain novel in another place my 
friend Mr. Talbot Twysden is mentioned — a man whom you 
and I know to be a wretched ordinaire, but who persists in 
treating himself as if he was the finest '20 port. In our Britain 
there are hundreds of men like him ; forever striving to swell 
beyond their natural size, to strain beyond their natural 
strength, to step beyond their natural stride. Search, search 
within your own waistcoat, dear brethren — you know in your 
hearts, which of your ordinaire qualities you would pass off, 
and fain consider as first-rate port. And why not you yourself, 



Io8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Mr. Preacher? says the congregation. Dearly beloved, neither 
in nor out of this pulpit do I profess to be bigger, or cleverer, 
or wiser, or better than any of you. A short while since, a 
certain Reviewer announced that I gave myself great preten- 
sions as a philosopher. I a philosopher ! I advance preten- 
sions ! My dear Saturday friend, And you ? Don't you teach 
everything to everybody .-' and punish the naughty boys if they 
don't learn as you bid them ? You teach politics to Lord John 
and Mr. Gladstone. You teach poets how to write ; painters, 
how to paint; gentlemen, manners ; and opera-dancers, how to 
pirouette. I was not a little amused of late by an instance of 
the modesty of our Saturday friend, who, more Athenian than 
the Athenians, and a propos of a Greek book by a Greek author, 
sat down and gravely showed the Greek gentleman how to 
write his own language. 

No, I do not, as far as I know, try to be port at all ; but 
offer in these presents, a sound genuine ordinaire, at iSj. per 
doz. let us say, grown on my own hill-side, and offered de bon 
cceur to those who will sit down under my tojitielle, and have a 
half-hour's drink and gossip. It is none of your hot porto, my 
friend. I know there is much better and stronger liquor else- 
where. Some pronounce it sour : some say it is thin ; some 
that it has wofully lost its flavor. This may or may not be 
true. There are good and bad years ; years that surprise 
everybody ; years of which the produce is small and bad, or 
rich and plentiful. But if my tap is not genuine it is naught, 
and no man should give himself the trouble to drink it. I do 
not even say that I would be port if I could ; knowing that 
port (by which I would imply much stronger, deeper, richer, 
and more durable liquor than my vineyard can furnish) is not 
relished by all palates, or suitable to all heads. We will as- 
sume then, dear brother, that you and I are tolerably modest 
people ; and, ourselves being thus out of the question, proceed 
to show how pretentious our neighbors are, and how very many 
of them would be port if they could. 

Have you never seen a small man from college placed 
amongst great folk, and giving himself the airs of a man of 
fashion .? He goes back to his common room with fond remi- 
niscences of Ermine Castle or Strawberry Hall. He writes to 
the dear countess, to say that dear Lord Lollypop is getting 
on very well at St. Boniface, and that the accident which he 
met with in a scuffle with an inebriated bargeman only showed 
his spirit and honor, and will not permanently disfigure his 
lordship's nosef He gets his clothes from dear Lollypop's 



SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. 



[09 



London tailor, and wears a mauve or magenta tie when he 
rides out to see the hounds. A love of fashionable people is a 
weakness, I do not say of all, but of some tutors. Witness 
that Eton tutor t'other day, who intimated that in Cornhill we 
could not understand the perfect purity, delicacy, and refine- 
ment of those genteel families who sent their sons to Eton. 

usher, mon ami! Old Sam Johnson, who, too, had been an 
usher in his early life, kept a little of that weakness always. 
Suppose Goldsmith had knocked him up at three in the morn- 
ing and proposed a boat to Greenwich, as Topham Beauclerc 
and his friend did, would he have said, " What, my boy, are 
you for a frolic? I'm with you!" and gone and put on his 
clothes 1 Rather he would have pitched poor Goldsmith down 
stairs. He would have liked to be port if he could. Of course 
we wouldn't. Our opinion of the Portugal grape is known. 
It grew very high, and is very sour, and we don't go for that 
kind of grape at all. 

" I was walking with Mr. Fox " — and sure this anecdote 
comes very pat after the grapes — " I was walking with Mr. 
Fox in the Louvre," says Benjamin West {apud some paper I 
have just been reading), " and I remarked how inany people 
turned round to look at me. This shows the respect of the 
French for the fine arts." This is a curious instance of a very 
small claret indeed, which imagined itself to be port of the 
strongest body. There are not many instances of a faith so 
deep, so simple, so satisfactory as this. I have met many 
who would like to be port ; but with few of the Gascon sort, 
who absolutely believed they were port. George III. believed 
in West's port, and thought Reynolds' overrated stuff. When 

1 saw West's pictures at Philadelphia, I looked at them with 
astonishment and awe. Hide, blushing glory, hide your head 
under your old nightcap. O immortality ! is this the end of you } 
Did any of you, my dear brethren, ever try and read " Black- 
more's Poems," or the " Epics of Baour-Lormian," or the 
"Henriade," or — what shall we say? — Pollok's "Course of 
Time ! " They were thought to be more lasting than brass by 
some people, and where are they now ? And our masterpieces 
of literature — our ports — that, if not immortal, at any rate are 
to last their fifty, their hundred years — oh, sirs, don't you think 
a very small cellar will hold them ? 

Those poor people in brass, on pedestals, hectoring about 
Trafalgar Square and that neighborhood, don't you think many 
of them — apart even from the ridiculous execution — cut rather a 
ridiculous figure, and that we are too eager to set up our ordin 



no ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

aire heroism and talent for port ? A Duke of Wellington or two 1 
will grant, though even of these idols a moderate supply will be 
sufficient. Some years ago a famous and witty French critic was 
in London, with whom I walked the streets. I am ashamed to 
say that I informed him (being \\\ hopes that he was about to 
write some papers regarding the manners and customs of this 
country) that all the statues he saw represented the Duke of 
Wellington That on the arch opposite Apsley House ? the 
Duke in a cloak, and cocked-hat, on horseback. That behind 
Apsley House in an airy fig-leaf costume .'' the Duke again. 
That in Cockspur Street .'' the Duke with a pigtail — and so on. 
I showed him an army of Dukes. There are many bronze 
heroes who after a few years look already as foolish, awkward, 
and out of place as a man, say at Shoolbred's or Swan and 
Edgar's. For example, those three Grenadiers in Pall Mall, 
who have been up only a few months, don't you pity those 
unhappy household troops, who have to stand frowning and 
looking fierce there ; and think they would like to step down 
and go to barracks ? That they fought very bravely there is 
no doubt ; but so did the Russians fight very bravely ; and the 
French fight very bravely ; and so did Colonel Jones and the 
99th, and Colonel Brown and the looth ; and I say again that 
ordinaire should not give itself port airs, and that an honest 
ordinaire would blush to be found swaggering so. I am sure 
if you could consult the Duke of York, who is impaled on his 
column between the two clubs, and ask his late Royal High- 
ness whether he thought he ought to remain there, he would 
say no. A brave, worthy man, not a braggart or boaster, to be 
put upon that heroic perch must be painful to him. Lord 
George Bentinck, I suppose, being in the midst of the family 
park in Cavendish Square, may conceive that he has a right to 
remain in his place. But look at William of Cumberland, with 
his hat cocked over his eye, prancing behind Lord George on 
his Roman-nosed charger ; he, depend on it, would be for get- 
ting off his horse if he had the permission. He did not hesi- 
tate about trifles, as we know ; but he was a very truth-telling 
and honorable soldier : and as for heroic rank and statuesque 
dignity, I would wager a dozen of '20 port against a bottle of 
pure and sound Bordeaux, at \Zs. per dozen (bottles included), 
that he never would think of claiming any such absurd distinc- 
tion. They have got a statue of Thomas Moore at Dublin, I 
hear. Is he on horseback ? Some men should have, say, a 
fifty years' lease of glory. After a while some gentlemen now 
in brass should go to the melting furnace, and reappear in some 



SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. m 

Other gentleman's shape. Lately I saw that Melville column 
rising over Edinburgh ; come, good men and true, don't you 
feel a little awkward and uneasy when you walk under it? 
Who was this to stand in heroic places ? and is yon the man 
whom Scotchmen most delight to honor ? I must own deferen- 
tially that there is a tendency in North Britain to over-esteem 
its heroes. Scotch ale is very good and strong, but it is not 
stronger than all the other beer in the world, as some Scottish 
patriots would insist. When there has been a war, and stout 
old Sandy Sansculotte returns home from India or Crimea, 
what a bagpiping, shouting, hurraying, and self-glorification 
takes place round about him ! You would fancy, to hear Me 
Orator after dinner, that the Scotch had fought all the battles, 
killed all the Russians, Indian rebels, or what not. In Cupar- 
Fife, there's a little inn called the " Battle of Waterloo," and 
what do you think the sign is ? (I sketch from memory, to be 
sure.) " The Battle of Waterloo " is one broad Scotchman 
laying about him with a broadsword. Yes, yes, my dear Mac, 
you are wise, you are good, you are clever, you are handsome, 
you are brave, you are rich, &c. ; but so is Jones over the 
border. Scotch salmon is good, but there are other good fish 
in the sea. I once heard a Scotchman lecture on poetry in 
London. Of course the pieces he selected were chiefly by 
Scottish authors, and Walter Scott was his favorite poet. I 
whispered to my neighbor, who was a Scotchman (by the way, 
the audience were almost all Scotch, and the room was All- 
Mac's — I beg your pardon, but I couldn't help it, I really 
couldn't help it) — " The professor has said the best poet was a 
Scotchman : I wager that he will say the worst poet was a 
Scotchman, too." And sure enough that worst poet, when he 
made his appearance, was a Northern Briton. 

And as we are talking of bragging, and I am on my travels, 
can I forget one mighty republic — one — two mighty republics, 
where people are notoriously fond of passing off their claret for 
port ? I am very glad, for the sake of a kind friend, that there 
is a great and influential party in the United, and, I trust, in 
the Confederate States,* who believe that Catawba wine is 
better than the best Champagne. Opposite that famous old 
White House at Washington, whereof I shall ever have a grate- 
ful memory, they have set up an equestrian statue of General 
Jackson, by a self-taught American artist of no inconsiderable 
genius and skill. At an evening-party a member of Congress 
seized me in a corner of the room, and asked me if I did not 

■ •'Written in July, 1861. 



1 1 2 ROUND ABO UT PAPERS. 

think this was the finest equestria7i statue in the world 1 How 
was I to deal with this plain question, put to me in a corner? 
I was bound to reply, and accordingly said that I did not think 
it was the finest statue in the world. " Well, sir," says the 

member of Congress, " but you mu^ remember that Mr. M 

had never seen a statue when he made this ! " I suggested 

that to see other statues might do Mr. M no harm. Nor 

was any man more willing to own his defects, or more modest 
regarding his merits, than the sculptor himself, whom I met 
subsequently. But oh ! what a charming article there was in a 
Washington paper next day about the impertinence of criticism 
and offensive tone of arrogance which Englishmen adopted 
towards men and works of genius in America ! " Who was 
this man, who," &c., «&c. .'' The Washington writer was angry 
because I would not accept this American claret as the finest 
port-wine in the world. Ah me ! It is about blood and not 
wine that the quarrel now is, and who shall fortell its end ? 

How much claret that would be port if it could is handed 
about in every society ! In the House of Commons what small- 
beer orators try to pass for strong ? Stay : have I a spite 
against any one 1 It is a fact that the wife of the Member for 
Bungay has left off asking me and Mrs. Roundabout to her 
evening-parties. Now is the time to have a slap at him. I 
will say that he was always overrated, and that now he is 
lamentably falling off even from what he has been. I will 
back the member for Stoke Poges against him ; and show that 
the dashing young member for Islington is a far sounder man 
than either. Have I any little literary animosities ? Of course 
not. Men of letters never have. Otherwise, how I could 
serve out a competitor here, make a face over his works, and 
show that this would-be port is very meagre ordinaire indeed ! 
Nonsense, man ! Why so squeamish .^ Do they spare you f 
Now you have the whip in your hand, won't you lay on ? You 
used to be a pretty whip enough as a young man, and liked it 
too. Is there no enemy who would be the better for a little 
thonging ? No. I have militated in former times, not with- 
out glory ; but I grow peaceable as I grow old. And if I have 
a literary enemy, why, he will probably write a book ere long, 
and then it will be his turn, and my favorite review will be 
down upon him. 

My brethren, these sermons are professedly short ; for I have 
that opinion of my dear congregation, which leads me to think 
that were I to preach at great length they would yawn, stamp, 
make noises, and perhaps go straightway out of church ; and yet 



OGRES. 



"3 



with this text I protest I could go on for hours. What multi- 
tudes of men, what multitudes of women, my dears, pass off 
their ordinaire for port, their small beer for strong ! In litera- 
ture, in politics, in the army, the navy, the church, at the bar, 
in the world, what an immei:^se quantity of cheap liquor is made 
to do service for better sorts! Ask Sergeant Roland his 
opinion of Oliver, Q. C. " Ordinaire, my good fellow, ordinaire, 
with a port-wine label ! " Ask Oliver his opinion of Roland. 
" Never was a man so overrated by the world and by himself." 
Ask Tweedledumski his opinion of Tweedledeestein's perform- 
ance. " A quack, my tear sir ! an ignoramus, I geef you my vort .-* 
He gombose an oioera! He is not fit to make dance a bear 1 " 
Ask Paddington and Buckmister, those two "swells" of 
fashion, what they think of each other? They are notorious 
ordinaire. You and I remember when they passed for very 
small wine, and now how high and mighty they have become. 
What do you say to Tomkins' sermons ? Ordinai'^e, trying to 
go down as orthodox port, and very meagre ordinaire too ! To 
Hopkins' historical works 1 — to Pumpkin's poetry ? Ordinaire, 
ordinaire again — thin, feeble, overrated; and so down the 
whole list. And when we have clone discussing our men 
friends, have we not all the women ? Do these not advance 
absurd pretensions ? Do these never give themselves airs .'' 
With feeble brains, don't they often set up to be esprifs forts ? 
Don't they pretend to be women of fashion, and cut their bet- 
ters ? Don't they try and pass off their ordinary-looking girls 
as beauties of the first order.-' Every man in his circle knows 
women who give themselves airs, and to whom we can apply 
the port-wine simile. 

Come, my friends. Here is enough of ordinaire and port 
for to-day. My bottle has run out. Will anybody have any 
more ? Let us go up stairs and get a cup of tea from the 
ladies. 



OGRES. 

I DARE say the reader has remarked that the upright and 
independent vowel, which stands in the vowel-list between E and 
O, has formed the subject of the main part of these essays. 
How does that vowel feel this morning? — fresh, good-humored, 

8 



H4 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

and lively ? The Roundabout lines, which fall from this pen, 
are correspondingly brisk and cheerful. Has anything, on the 
contrary, disagreed with the vowel ? Has its rest been dis- 
turbed, or was yesterday's dinner too good, or yesterday's wine 
not good enough ? Under such circumstances, a darkening, 
misanthropic tinge, no doubt, is cast upon the paper. The 
jokes, if attempted, are elaborate and dreary. The bitter 
temper breaks out. That sheering manner is adopted, which 
you know, and which exhibits itself so especially when the 
writer is speaking about women. A moody carelessness comes 
over him. He sees no good in anybody or thing : and treats 
gentlemen, ladies, history, and things in general, with a like 
gloomy flippancy. Agreed. When the vowel in question is in 
that mood, if you like airy gayety and tender gushing benevo- 
lence — if you want to be satisfied with yourself and the rest of 
your fellow-beings : I recommend you, my dear creature, to go 
to some other shop in Cornhill, or turn to some other article. 
There are moods in the mind of the vowel of which we are 
speaking, when it is ill conditioned and captious. Who always 
keeps good health, and good humor ? Do not philosophers 
grumble .-' Are not sages sometimes out of temper ? and do 
not angel-women go off in tantrums ? To-day my mood is 
dark. I scowl as I dip my pen into the inkstand. 

Here is the day come round — for everything here is done 
with the utmost regularity : — intellectual labor, sixteen hours ; 
meals, thirty-two minutes ; exercise, a hundred and forty-eight 
minutes ; conversation with the family, chiefly literary, and 
about the housekeeping, one hour and four minutes ; sleep, 
three hours and fifteen minutes (at the end of the month, when 
the Magazine is complete, I own I take eight minutes more); 
and the rest for the toilette and the world. Well, I say, the 
Roundabout Paper Z>rty being come, and the subject long since 
■settled in my mind, an excellent subject — a most telling, lively, 
and popular subject — I go to breakfast determined to finish 
that meal in 93^ minutes, as usual, and then retire to my desk 
• and work, when — oh, provoking! — here in the paper is the 
very subject treated, on which I was going to write ! Yester- 
day another paper which I saw treated it — and of course, as I 
need not tell you, spoiled it. Last Saturday, another paper 
had an article on the subject ; perhaps you may guess what it 
was — but I won't tell you. Only this is true, my favorite sub- 
ject, which was about to make the best paper we have had for 
■a long time : my bird, my game that I was going to shoot and 
■serve up with such a delicate sauce, has been found by other 



OGRES. 



1^5 



sportsmen ; and pop, pop, pop, a half-dozen of guns have 
banged at it, mangled it, and brought it down. 

" And can't you take some other text ! " say you. All this 
is mighty well. But if you have set your heart on a certain 
dish for dini r, be it cold boiled veal, or what you will, and 
thev bring you turtle and venison, don't you feel disappointed ? 
During your walk you have been making up your mind that 
that cold meat, with moderation and a pickle, will be a very 
sufficient dinner : you have accustomed your thoughts to it ; 
and here, in place of it, is a turkey, surrounded by coarse 
sausages, or a reeking pigeon-pie or a fulsome roast-pig. I 
have known many a good and kind man made furiously angry 
by such a contrdemps. I have known him to lose his temper, 
call his wife and servants names, and a whole household made 
miserable. If, then, as is notoriously the case, it is too danger- 
ous to baulk a man about his dinner, how much more about his 
article .-' I came to my meal with an ogre-like appetite and 
gusto. Fee, faw, fum ! Wife, where is that tender little 
Princekin ? Have you trussed him, and did you stuff him 
nicely, and have you taken care to baste him and do him, not 
too brown, as I told you ? Quick ! I am hungry ! I begin to 
whet my knife, to roll my eyes about, and roar and clap my 
huge chest like a gorilla ; and then my poor Ogrina has to tell 
me that the little princes have all run away, whilst she was in 
the kitchen, making the paste to bake them in ! I pause in 
tlie description. I don't condescend to report the bad lan- 
guage, which you know must ensue, when an ogre, whose mind 
is ill regulated, and whose habits of self-indulgence are notori- 
ous, finds himself disappointed of his greedy hopes. What 
treatment of his wife, what abuse and brutal behavior to his 
children, who, though ogrillons, are children ! My dears, you 
may fancy, and need not ask my delicate pen to describe, the 
language and behavior of a vulgar, coarse, greedy, large man 
with an immense mouth and teeth, which are too frequently 
employed in the gobbling and crunching of raw man's meat. 

And in this circuitous way you see I have reached my pres- 
ent subject, which is Ogres. You fancy they are dead or only 
fictitious characters — mythical representatives of strength, 
cruelty, stupidity, and lust for blood ? Though they haa 
seven-leagued boots, you remember all sorts of little whipping- 
snapping Tom Thumbs used to elude and outrun them. They 
were so stupid that they gave in to the most shallow ambuscades 
and artifices : witness that well-known ogre, who, because Jack 
cut open the hasty-pudding, instantly ripped open his own 



Il6 ROUN-DABOUT PAPERS. 

Stupid waistcoat and interior. They were cruel, brutal, dis- 
gusting, with their sharpened teeth, immense knives, and roar- 
ing voices ! but they always ended by being overcome by little 
Tom Thumbkins, or some other smart little champion. 

Yes ; they were conquered in the end there is no doubt. 
They plunged headlong (and uttering the most frightful bad 
language) into some pit where Jack came with his smart couteau 
de chasse and whipped their brutal heads off. They would be 
going to devour maidens, 

" But ever when it seemed 

Their need was nt tlie sorest, 
A knight, in armor bright, 

Came riding through the forest." 

And down, alter a combat, would go the brutal persecutor, 
with a lance through his midriff. Yes, I say, this is very true 
and well. But you remember that round the ogre's cave the 
ground was covered, for hundreds and hundreds of yards, 7vith 
the Iwnes of the victims whom he had lured into the castle. Many 
knights and maids came to him and perished under his knife 
and teeth. Were dragons the same as ogres ? monsters dwell- 
ing in caverns, whence they rushed, attired in jDlate armor, 
wielding pikes and torches, and destroying stray passengers 
who passed by their lair ? Monsters, brutes, rapacious tyrants, 
ruffians, as they were, doubtless they ended by being overcome. 
But, before they were destroyed, they did a deal of mischief. 
The bones round their caves were countless. They had sent 
many brave souls to Hades, before their own fled, howling out 
of their rascal carcasses, to the same place of gloom. 

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that fairies, 
champions, distressed damsels, and by consequence ogres, have 
ceased to exist. It may not be ogreable to them (pardon the 
horrible pleasantry, but as I am writing in the solitude of my 
chamber, I am grinding my teeth — yelling, roaring, and curs- 
ing — brandishing my scissors and paper-cutter, and, as it were, 
have become an ogre). I say there is no greater mistake than 
to suppose that ogres have ceased to exist. We all hnow 
ogres. Their caverns are round us, and about us. There are the 
castles of several ogres within a mile of the spot where I write. 
I think some of them suspect I am an ogre myself. I am not; 
but I know they are. I visit them. I don't mean to say that 
they take a cold roast prince out of the cupboard, and have a 
cannibal feast before me. But I see the bones lying about the 
roads to their houses, and in the areas and gardens. Polite- 
ness, of course, prevents me from making any remarks ; but I 



OGRES. 



"7 



know them well enough. One of the ways to know em is to 
watch the scared looks of the ogres' wives and children. They 
lead an awful life. They are present at dreadful cruelties. In 
their excesses those ogres will stab about, and kill not only 
strangers who happen to call in and ask a night's lodging, 
but they will outrage, murder, and chop up their own kin. We 
all know ogres, I say, and have been in their dens often. It 
is not necessary that ogres who ask you to dine should offer 
their guests the peculiar dish which they like. They cannot 
always get a Tom Thumb family. They eat mutton and beef 
too ; and I dare say even go out to tea, and invite you to drink 
it. But I tell you there are numbers of them going about in 
the world. And now you have my word for it, and this little 
hint, it is quite curious what an interest society may be made 
to have for you, by your determining to find out the ogres you 
meet there. 

What does the man mean ? says Mrs. Downright, to whom a 
joke is a very grave thing. I mean, madam, that in the com- 
pany assembled in your genteel drawing-room, who bow here 
and there and smirk in white neck-cloths, you receive men who 
elbow through life successfully enough, but who are ogres in 
private : men wicked, false, rapacious, flattering ; cruel hec- 
tors at home, smiling courtiers aloroad ; causing wives, children, 
servants, parents, to tremble before them, and smiling and bow- 
ing as they bid strangers welcome into their castles. I say, there 
are men who have crunched the bones of victim after victim ; in 
whose closets lie skeletons picked frightfully clean. When these 
ogres come out into the world, you don't suppose they show 
their knives, and their great teeth ? A neat simple white neck- 
cloth, a merry rather obsequious manner, a cadaverous look, 
perhaps, now and again, and a rather dreadful grin ; but I 
know ogres very considerably respected : and when you hint 
to such and such a man, " My dear sir, Mr. Sharpus, whom 
you appear to like, is, I assure you, a most dreadful cannibal ;" 
the gentleman cries, " Oh, psha, nonsense ! Dare say not so 
black as he is painted. Dare say not worse than his neighbors." 
We condone everything in this country — private treason, false- 
hood, flattery, cruelty at home, roguery, and double dealing. 
What ! Do you mean to*say in your acquaintance you don't 
know ogres guilty of countless crimes of fraud and force, and 
that knowing them you don't shake hands with them ; dine 
with them at your table ; and meet them at their own ? De- 
pend upon it, in the time when there were real live ogres in real 
caverns or castles, gobbling up real knights and virgins, when 



Ilg ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

they went into the world — the neighboring market-town, let us 
say, or earl's castle — though their nature and reputation were 
pretty well known, their notorious foibles were never alluded 
to. You would say, " What, Blunderbore, my boy ! How do 
you do ? . How well and fresh you look ! What's the receipt 
you have for keeping so young and rosy ? " And j'^our wife 
would softly ask after Mrs. Blunderbore and the dear children. 
Or it would be, " My dear Humguffin ! try that pork. It is 
home-bred, home-fed, and, I promise you, tender. Tell me if 
you think it is as good as yours ? John, a glass of Burgundy 
to Colonel Humguffin ! " You don't suppose there would be 
any unpleasant allusions to disagreeable home-reports regard- 
ing Humguffin's manner of furnishing his larder .'' I say we 
all of us know ogres. We shake hands and dine with ogres. 
And if inconvenient moralists tell us we are cowards for our 
pains, we turn round with a /// quoque^ or say that we don't 
meddle with other folk's affairs ; that jDCople are much less 
black than they are painted, and so on. What! Won't half 
the county go to Ogreham Castle ? Won't some of the clergy 
say grace at dinner ? Won't the mothers bring their daugliters 
to dance with the young Rawheads } And if Lady Ogreham 
happens to die — I won't say to go the way of all flesh, that is 
too revolting — I say if Ogreham is a widower, do you aver, on 
your conscience and honor, that mothers will not be found to 
offer their young girls to supply the lamented lady's place ? 
How stale this misanthropy is ! Something must have dis- 
agreed with this cynic. Yes, my good woman. I dare say you 
would like to call another subject. Yes, my fine fellow ; ogre . 
at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and shaking in 
thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of sham gayety to con- 
ceal thy terror, lest I should point thee out : — thou art prosper- 
ous and honored, art thou ? I say thou hast been a tyrant 
and a robber. Thou hast plundered the poor. Thou hast 
bullied the weak. Thou hast laid violent hands on the goods 
of the innocent and confiding. Thou hast made a prey of the 
meek and gentle who asked for thy protection. Thou hast 
been hard to thy kinsfolk, and cruel to thy family. Go, mon- 
ster ! Ah, when shall little Jack come and drill daylight through 
thy wicked cannibal carcase ? I see t^e ogre pass on, bowing 
right and left to the company ; and he gives a dreadful sidelong 
glance of suspicion as he is talking to my lord bishop in the 
corner there. 

Ogres in our days need not be giants at all. In former 
times, and in children's books, where it is necessary to paint 



OGRES. 



it9 



your moral in such large letters that there can be no mistake 
about it, ogres are made witli that enormous mouth and }-aie- 
lier which you know of, and with which they can swallow 
down a baby, almost without using that great knife which they 
always carry. They are too cunning nowadays. They go 
about in society, slim, small, quietly dressed, and showing no 
especially great appetite. In my own young days there used 
to be play ogres — men who would devour a young fellow in one 
sitting, and leave him without a bit of flesh on his bones. They 
were quite gentlemanlike-looking people. They got the young 
fellow into their cave. Champagne, pate-de-foie-gras, and num- 
berless good things, were handed about ; and then, having eaten, 
the young man was devoured in his turn. I believe these card 
and dice ogres have died away almost entirely as the hasty- 
pudding giants whom Tom Thumb overcame. Now, there are 
ogres in City courts who lure you into their dens. About our 
Cornish mines I am told there are many most plausible ogres, 
who tempt you into their caverns and pick your bones there. 
In a certain newspaper there used to be lately a whole column 
of advertisements from ogres who would put on the most 
plausible, nay, piteous appearance, in order to inveigle their 
victims. You would read, " A tradesman, established for 
seventy years in the City, and known, and much respected by 
Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Baring Brothers, has pressing 
need for three pounds until next Saturday. He can give se- 
curity for half a million, and forty thousand pounds will be 
given for the .use of the loan," and so on ; or, " An influential 
body of capitalists are about to establish a company, of which 
the business will be enormous and the profits proportionately 
prodigious. They will require a secretary, of good address 
and appearance, at a salary of two thousand per annum. He 
need not be able to write, but address and manners are abso- 
lutely necessary. As a mark of confidence in the company, he 
will have to deposit," &c. ; or, " A young widow (of pleasing 
manners and appearance) who has a pressing necessity for four 
pounds ten for three weeks, offers her Erard's grand piano 
valued at three hundred guineas ; a diamond cross of eight 
hundred pounds ; and board and lodging in her elegant villa 
near Banbury Cross, with the best references and society, in 
return for the loan." I suspect these people are ogres. There 
are ogres and ogres. Polyphemus was a great, tall, one-eyed, 
notorious ogre, fetching his victims out of a hole, and gob- 
bling them one after another. There could be no mistake 
about him. But so were the Sirens ogres — pretty blue-eyed 



I20 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

things, peeping at you coaxingly from out of the water, and 
singing their melodious wheedles. And the bones round their 
caves were more numerous than the ribs, skulls, and thigh- 
bones round the cavern of hulking Polypheme. 

To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up rides the 
dapper champion of the pen ; puffs boldly upon the horn which 
hangs by the chain ; enters the hall resolutely, and challenges 
the big tyrant sulking within. We defy him to combat, the 
enormous roaring rufifian ! We give him a meeting on the 
green plain before his castle. Green ? No wonder it should 
be green : it is manured with human bones. After a few grace- 
ful wheels and curvets, we take our ground. We stoop over 
our saddle. 'Tis but to kiss the locket of our lady-love's hair. 
And now the vizor is up : the lance is in rest (Gillott's iron is 
the point for me). A touch of the spur in the gallant side of 
Pegasus, and we gallop at the great brute. 

" Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, m}'' squire ! " And 
who are these who pour out of the castle? the imprisoned 
maidens, the maltreated widows, the poor old hoary grand- 
fathers, who have been locked up in the dungeons these scores 
and scores of years, writhing under the tyranny of that ruffian ! 
Ah ye knights of the pen ! May honor be your shield, and 
truth tip your lances ! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be 
modest to women. Be tender to children. And as for the 
Ogre Humbug, out sword, and have at him. 



ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS WHICH I 
INTENDED TO WRITE* 

We have all heard of a place paved with good intentions : — 
a place which I take to be a very dismal, useless and unsatis- 
factory terminus for many pleasant thoughts, kindly fancies, 
gentle wishes, merry little quips and pranks, harmless jokes 
which die as it were the moment of their birth. Poor little 
children of the brain I He was a dreary theologian who hud- 
dled you under such a melancholy cenotaph, and laid you in 
the vaults under the flagstones of Hades ! I trust that some 

* The following paper was written in 1861, after the extraordinary affray between Major 
Murray and the money-lender in a Iiouse in Northumberland Street, Strand, and subse- 
quent to the appearance of M. Du Chaillu's book on GorillaE. 



ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 121 

of the best actions we have all of us committed in our lives 
have been committed in fancy. It is not all wickedness we are 
thinking, que (liable ! Some of our thoughts are bad enough I 
grant you. Many a one you and I have had here below. Ah 
mercy, what a monster ! what crooked horns ! what leering 
eyes ! what a flaming mouth ! what cloven feet, and what a 
hideous writhing tail ! Oh, let us fall down on our knees, repeat 
our most potent exorcisms, and overcome the brute. Spread 
your black pinions, fly — fly to the dusky .realms of Eblis, and bury 
thyself under the paving-stones of his hall, dark genie ! But 
all thoughts are not so. No — no. There are the pure : there 
are the kind : there are the gentle. There are sweet unspoken 
thanks before a fair scene of nature : at a sun-setting below a 
glorious sea; or a moon and a host of stars shining over it : 
at a bunch of children playing in the street, or a group of flow- 
ers by the hedge-side, or a bird singing there. At a hundred 
moments or occurrences of the day good thoughts pass through 
the mind, let us trust, which never are spoken ; prayers are 
made which never are said ; and Te Deum is sung without 
church, clerk, choristers, parson or organ. Why, there's my 
enemy : who got the place I wanted ; who maligned me to the 
woman I wanted to be well with ; who supplanted me in the 
good graces of my patron, I don't say anything about the 
matter: but, my poor old enemy, in my secret mind I have 
movements of as tender charity towards you, you old scoun- 
drel, as ever I had when we were boys together at school. You 
ruffian ! do you fancy I forget that we were fond of each other ? 
We are still. We share our toffy ; go halves at the tuck-shop ; 
do each other's exercises ; prompt each other with the word in 
construing or repetition ; and tell the most frightful fibs to pre- 
vent each other from being found out. We meet each other in 
public. Ware a fight ! Get them into different parts of the 
room ! Our friends hustle round us. Capulet and Montague 
are not more at odds than the houses of Roundabout and 
Wrightabout, let us say. It is, " My dear Mrs. Buffer, do 
kindly put yourself in the chair between those two men ! " Or, 
My dear Wrightabout, will you take that charming Lady Blanc- 
mange down to supper? She adores your poems; and gave 
five shillings for your autograph at the fancy fair." In like 
manner the peace-makers gather round Roundabout on his 
part : he is carried to a distant corner, and coaxed out of the 
way of the enemy with whom he is at feud. 

When we meet in the Square at Verona, out flash rapiers, 
and we fall to. But in his private mind Tybalt owns that 



122 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Mercutio has a rare wit, and Mercutio is sure that his adver- 
sary is a gallant gentleman. Look at the amphitheatre yonder. 
You do not suppose those gladiators who fought and perished, 
as hundreds of spectators in that grim Circus held thumbs 
down, and cried, "Kill, kill ! " — you do not suppose the com- 
batants of necessity hated each other ? No more than the 
celebrated trained bands of literary sword-and-buckler men 
hate the adversaries whom they meet in the arena. They en- 
gage at the given signal ; feint and parry ; slash, poke, rip 
each other open, dismember limbs, and hew off noses : but in 
the way of business, and, I trust, with mutual private esteem. 
For instance, I salute the warriors of the Superfine Company 
with the honors due among warriors. Here's at you, Sparta- 
cus, my lad. A hit, I acknowledge. A palpable hit! Ha! 
how do you like that poke in the eye in return ? When the 
trumpets sing truce, or the spectators are tired, we bow to the 
noble company : withdraw ; and get a cool glass of wine in our 
rendezvous des braves gladiateiirs. 

By the way, I saw that amphitheatre of Verona under the 
strange light of a lurid eclipse some years ago : and I have 
been there in spirit for these twenty lines past, under a vast 
gusty awning, now with twenty thousand fellow-citizens looking 
on from the benches, now in the circus itself, a grim gladiator 
with sword and net, or a meek martyr — was I ? — brought out 
to be gobbled up by the lions ? or a huge, shaggy, tawny lion 
myself, on whom the dogs were going to be set } What a day 
of excitement I have had to be sure ! But I must get away 
from Verona, or who knows how much farther the Roundabout 
Pegasus may carry me? 

We were saying, my Muse, before we dropped and perched 
on earth for a couple of sentences, that our unsaid words were 
in some limbo or other, as real as those we have uttered ; that 
the thoughts which have passed through our brains are as 
actual as any to which our tongues and pens have given cur- 
rency. For instance, besides what is here hinted at, I have 
thought ever so much more about Verona : about an early 
Christian church I saw there ; about a great dish of rice we had 
at the inn ; about the bugs there ; about ever so many more 
details of that day's journey from Milan to Venice ; about lake 
Garda, which lay on the way from Milan, and so forth. I say 
what fine things we have thought of, haven't we, all of us ? Ah, 
what a fine tragedy that was I thought of, and never wrote! 
On the day of the dinner of the Oystermongers' Company, what 
a noble speech I thought of in the cab, and broke down — I 



ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 123 

don't mean the cab, but the speech. Ah, if you could but read 
some of the unwritten Roundabout Papers — how you would be 
amused ! Aha ! my friend, I catch you saying, " Well, then, I 
wish this was unwritten with all my heart." Very good. I owe 
you one. I do confess a hit, a palpable hit. 

One day in the past month, as I was reclining on the bench 
of thought, with that ocean The Times newspaper spread before 
me, the ocean cast up on the shore at my feet two famous sub- 
jects for Roundabout Papers, and I picked up those waifs, and 
treasured them away until I could polish them and bring them 
to market. That scheme is not to be carried out. I can't 
write about those subjects. And though I cannot write about 
them, I may surely tell what are the subjects I am going not to 
write about. 

The first was that Northumberland Street encounter, which 
all the papers have narrated. Have any novelists of our days 
a scene and catastrophe more strange and terrible than this 
which occurs at noonday within a few yards of the greatest 
thoroughfare in Europe ? At the theatres they have a new 
name for their melo-dramatic pieces, and call them " Sensation 
Dramas." What a sensation Drama this is ! What have 
people been flocking to see at the Adelphi Theatre for the last 
hundred and fifty nights .? A woman pitched overboard out of 
a boat, and a certain Miles taking a tremendous " header," and 
bringing her to shore ? Bagatelle ! What is this compared to 
the real life-drama, of which a midday representation takes 
place just opposite the Adelphi in Northumberland Street? 
The brave Dumas, the intrepid Ainsworth, the terrible Eugene 
Sue, the cold-shudder-inspiring " Woman in White," the as- 
tounding author of the " Mysteries of the Court of London," 
never invented anything more tremendous than this. It might 
have happened to you and me. We want to borrow a little 
money. We are directed to an agent. We propose a pecuniary 
transaction at a short date. He goes into the next room, as we 
fancy, to get the bank-notes, and returns with " two very pretty, 
delicate little ivory-handled pistols," and blows a portion of our 
heads off. After this, what is the use of being squeamish 
about the probabilities and possibilities in the writing of fic- 
tion ? Years ago I remember making merry over a play of 
Dumas, called Kean, in which the " Coal-Hole Tavern " was 
represented on the Thames, with a fleet of pirate-ships moored 
alongside. Pirate-ships ? Why not ? What a cavern of terror 
was this in Northumberland Street, with its splendid furniture 
covered with dust, its empty bottles, in the midst of which sits a 



c24 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



grim " agent," amusing himself by firing pistols, aiming at the 
unconscious mantel-piece, or at the heads of his customers ! 

After this, what is not possible ? It is possible Hungerford 
Market is mined, and will explode some day. Mind how you 
go in for a penny ice unawares. " Pray, step this wa}^," says a 
quiet person at the door. You enter — into aback room: — a 
quiet room ; rather a dark room. " Pray, take your place in a 
chair." 7\nd she goes to fetch the penny ice. Malhcurcux ! 
The chair sinks down with you — sinks, and sinks, and sinks — a 
large wet flannel suddenly envelopes your face and throttles 
you. Need we say any more ? After Northumberland Street, 
what is improbable ? Surely there is no difficulty in crediting 
Bluebeard. I withdraw my last month's opinions about ogres. 
Ogres? Why not? I protest I have seldom contemplated 
anything more terribfy^ ludicrous than this " agent " in the dingy 
splendor of this den, surrounded by dusty ormolu and piles of 
empty bottles, firing pistols for his diversion at the mantel-piece 
until his clients come in I Is pistol-practice so common in 
Northumberland Street, that it passes without notice in the 
lodging houses there ? 

We spake anon of good thoughts. About bad thoughts ? 
Is there some Northumberland Street chamber in your heart 
and mine, friend : close to the every-day street of life : visited 
by daily friends : visited by people on business ; in which 
affairs are transacted ; jokes are uttered ; wine is drunk ; 
through which people come and go ; wives and children pass ; 
and in which murder sits unseen until the terrible moment v.'hen 
he rises up and kills ? A farmer, say, has a gun over the 
mantel-piece in his room where he sits at his daily meals and 
rest : caressing his children, joking with his friends, smoking 
his pipe in his calm. One night the gun is taken down ; the 
farmer goes out : and it is a murderer who comes back and 
puts the piece up and drinks by that fireside. Was he a 
murderer yesterday when he was tossing the baby on his knee, 
and when his hands were playing with his little girl's yellow 
hair ? Yesterday there was no blood on them at all : they 
were shaken by honest men : have done many a kind act in 
their time very likely. He leans his head on one of them, the 
wife comes in with her anxious looks of welcome, the children 
are prattling as they did yesterday round the father's knee at 
the fire, and Cain is sitting by the embers, and Abel lies dead 
on the moor. Think of the gulf between now and yesterday. 
Oh, 3'esterday ! Oh, the days when those two loved each other 
and said their prayers side by side 1 He goes to sleep, per- 



ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



125 



haps, and dreams that his brother is alive. Be true, O dream ! 
Let hirn live in dreams, and wake no more. Be undone, O 
crime, O crime ! But the sun rises : and the officers of con- 
science come : and yonder lies the body on the moor. I hap- 
pened to pass, and looked at the Nor:;humberland Street house 
the other day, A few loiterers were gazing up at the dingy 
windows. A plain ordinary face of a house enough — and in a 
chamber in it one man suddenly rose up, pistol in hand, to 
slaughter another. Have you ever killed any one in your 
thoughts ? Has your heart compassed any man's death ? In 
your mind, have you ever taken a brand from the altar, and 
slain your brother.^ How many plain ordinary faces of men 
do we look at, unknowing of murder behind those eyes ? 
Lucky for you and me, brother, that we have good thoughts 
unspoken. But the bad ones.'' I tell you that the sight of 
those blank windows in Northumberland Street — through 
which, as it were, my mind could picture the awful tragedy 
glimmering behind — set me thinking, " Mr. Street-Preacher, 
here is a text for one of your pavement sermons. But it is too 
glum and serious. You eschew dark thoughts : and desire to 
be cheerful and merry in the main." And, such being the 
case, you see we must have no Roundabout Essay on this 
subject. 

Well, I had another arrow in my quiver. (So, you know, 
had William Tell a bolt for his son, the apple of his eye ; and 
a shaft for Gessler, in case William came to any trouble with the 
first poor little target.) And this, I must tell you, was to have 
been a rare Roundabout performance — one of the very best 
that has ever appeared in this series. It was to have con- 
tained all the deep pathos of Addison : the logical precision of 
Rabelais ; the childlike playfulness of Swift ; the manly stoi- 
cism of Sterne : the metaphysical depth of Goldsmith ; the 
blushing modesty of Fielding ; the epigrammatic terseness of 
Walter Scott ; the uproarious humor of Sam Richardson; and 
the gay simplicity of Sam Johnson ; — it was to have combined 
all these qualities, with some excellences of modern writers 
whom I could name : — but circumstances have occurred which 
have rendered this Roundabout Essay also impossible. 

I have not the least objection to tell you what was to 
have been the subject of that other admirable Roundabout 
Paper. Gracious powers ! the Dean of St. Patrick's never had 
a better theme. The paper was to have been on the Gorillas, 
to be sure. I was going to imagine myself to be a young 
surgeon-apprentice from Charleston, in South Carolina, who 



126 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

ran away to Cuba on account of unhappy family circumstances, 
with which nobody has the least concern ; who sailed thence to 
Africa in a large, roomy schooner with an extraordinary vacant 
space between decks. I was subject to dreadful ill treatment 
from the first mate of the ship, who, when I found she was a 
slaver, altogether declined to put me on shore. I was chased 
— Vv-e were chased — by three British frigates and a seventy-four, 
which we engaged and captured ; but were obliged to scuttle 
and sink, as we could sell them in no African port : and I 
never shall forget the look of manly resignation, combined with 
considerable disgust, of the Eritish Admiral as he walked the 
plank, after cutting off his pigtail, which he handed to me, and 
which I still have in charge for his family at Boston, Lincoln- 
shire, England. 

We made the port of Bpoopoo, at the confluence of the 
Bungo and Sgglolo rivers (which you may see in Swammerdahl's 
map) on the 31st April last year. Our passage had been so 
extraordinarily rapid, owing to the continued drunkenness of 
the captain and chief officers, by which I was obliged to work 
the ship and take her in command, that we reached Bpoopoo 
six weeks before we were expected, and five before the cofTres 
from the interior and from the great slave depot at Zbabblo 
were expected. Their delay caused us not a little discomfort, 
because, though we had taken the four English ships, we knew 
that Sir Byam Martin's iron-cased squadron, with the " Warrior," 
the "Impregnable," the " Sanconiathon," and the " Berosus," 
were cruising in the neighborhood, and might prove too much 
for us. 

It not only became necessary to quit Bpoopoo before the 
arrival of the British fleet, or the rainy season, but to get our 
people on board as soon as might be. While the chief mate, 
with a detachment of seamen, hurried forward to the Pgogo 
lake, where we expected a considerable part of our cargo, the 
second mate, with six men, four chiefs. King Fbumbo, an Obi 
man, and myself, went N.W. by W., towards King Mtoby's- 
town, where we knew many hundreds of our between-deck 
passengers were to be got together. We went down the Pdodo 
river, shooting snipes, ostriches, and rhinoceros in plenty, and 
I think a few elephants, until, by the advice of a guide, who I 
now believe was treacherous, v/e were induced to leave the 
Pdodo, and march N.E. by N.N. Here Lieutenant Larkins, 
who had persisted in drinking rum from morning to night, and 
thrashing me in his sober moments during the whole journey, 
died, and I have too good reason to know was eaten with much 



ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



127 



relish by the natives. At Mgoo, where there are barracoons and 
a depot for our cargo, we had no news of our expected freight ; 
accordingly, as time pressed exceedingly, parties were despatch- 
ed in ad\'ance towards the great Washaboo lake, by which the 
caravans usually come towards the coast. Here we found no 
caravan, but only four negroes down with the ague, whom I 
treated, I am bound to say, unsuccessfully, whilst we waited for 
our friends. We used to take watch and watch in front of the 
place, both to guard ourselves from attack, and get early news 
of the api^roaching caravan. 

At last, on the 23d September, as I was in advance with 
Charles Rogers, second mate, and two natives with bows and 
arrows, Vv^e were crossing a great plain skirted by a forest, when 
we saw emerging from a ravine what I took to be three negroes 
— a very tall one, one of a moderate size, and one quite little. 

Our native guides shrieked out some words in their lan- 
guage, of which Charles Rogers knew something. I thought 
it was the advance of the negroes whom we expected. " No ! " 
said Rogers (who swore dreadfully in conversation), " it is the 
Gorillas ! " And he fired both barrels of his gun, bringing down 
the little one first, and the female afterwards. 

The male, who was untouched, gave a howl that you might 
have heard a league off ; advanced towards us as if he would 
attack us, and then turned and ran away with inconceivable 
celerity towards the wood. 

We went up towards the fallen brutes. The little one by 
the female appeared to be about two years old. It lay bleating 
and moaning on the ground, stretching out its little hands with 
movements and looks so strangely resembling human, that my 
heart sickened with pity. The female, who had been shot 
through both legs, could not move. She howled most hideously 
when I approached the little one. 

" We must be off," said Rogers, " or the whole Gorilla race 
may be down upon us." " The little one is only shot in the 
leg," I said. "I'll bind the limb up, and we will carry the 
beast with us on board." 

The poor little wretch held up its leg to show it was 
wounded, and looked to me with appealing eyes. It lay quite 
still whilst I looked for and found the bullet, and, tearing off a 
piece of my shirt, bandaged up the wound. I was so occupied 
in this business, that I hardly heard Rogers cry " Run ! run ! " 
and when I looked up 

When I looked up, with a roar the most horrible I ever 
heard — a roar ? ten thousand roars — a whirling army of dark 



128 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

beings rushed by me. Rogers, who had bullied me so fright* 
fully during tlie voyage, and who had encouraged my fatal 
passion for play, so that I own I owed him 1500 dollars, was 
overtaken, felled, brained, and torn into ten thousand pieces; 
and I dare say the same fate would have fallen on me, but 
that the little Gorilla, whose wound I had dressed, flung its 
arms round my neck (their arms, you know, are much longer 
than ours). And when an immense gray Gorilla, with hardly 
any teeth, brandishing the trunk of a goUyboshtree about six- 
teen feet long, came up to me roaring, the little one squeaked 
out something plaintive, which of course I could not under- 
stand ; on which suddenly the monster flung down his tree, 
sqiiatted down on his huge hams by the side of the little pa- 
tient, and began to bellow and weep. 

And now, do you see whom I had rescued ? I had rescued 
the young Prince of the Gorillas, who was out walking with his 
nurse and footman. The footman had run off to alarm his 
master, and certainly I never saw a footman run faster. The 
whole army of Gorillas rushed forward to rescue their prince, 
and punish his enemies. If the King Gorilla's emotion was 
great, fancy what the Queen's must have been when she came 
up ! She arrived, on a litter, neatly enough made with wattled 
branches, on which she lay, with her youngest child, a prince 
of three weeks old. 

My little protege, with the wounded leg, still persisted in 
hugging me with its arms (I think I mentioned that they are 
longer than those of men in general), and as the poor little 
brute was immensely heavy, and the Gorillas go at a prodigious 
pace, a litter was made for us likewise ; and my thirst much 
refreshed by a footman (the same domestic who had given the 
alarm) running hand over hand up a cocoanut-tree, tearing the 
rinds off, breaking the shell on his head, and handing me the 
fresh milk in its cup. My little patient partook of a little, 
stretching out its dear little unwounded foot, with which, or 
with its hand, a Gorilla can help himself indiscriminately. 
Relays of large Gorillas relieved each other at the litters at 
intervals of twenty minutes, as I calculated by my watch, one 
of Jones and Bates's, of Boston, Mass., though I have been 
unable to this day to ascertain how these animals calculate 
time with such surprising accuracy. We slept for that night 
under 

And now, you see, we arrive at really the most interesting 
part of my travels in the country which I intended to visit, viz. : 
the manners and habits of the Gorillas c/iez eux. I give the 



ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



129 



heads of this narrative only, the full account being suppressed 
for a reason which shall presently be given. The heads, then, 
of the chapters, are briefly as follows : — 

The author'' s arrival in the Gorilla country. Its geographical 
positiofi. Lodgings assigned to him 7i/> a gum-tree. Constant 
attachment of the little prince. His royal highnesses gratitude. 
Anecdotes of his wit, playfulness, and extraordinary precocity. 
Am offered a portion of poor Larkins for my supper, but decline 
with horror. Footma?i brings me a young crocodile : fishy but very 
palatable. Old crocodiles too tough : ditto rhinoceros. Visit the 
queen mother — an enormous old Gorilla, quite white. Prescribe for 
her majesty. Meetifig of Gorillas at what appears a parliament 
amongst them : presided over by old Gorilla in cocoa-nutfibre wig. 
Their sports. Their customs. A privileged class amongst them. 
Extraordinary likeness of Gorillas to people at ho7nc, both at 
Charleston, S. C, my native place ; atid London, Eiigland, which 
I have visited. Flat-nosed Gorillas and blue-nosed Gorillas ; their 
hatred, and wars betweeji them. Ln a part of the country (its 
geographical position described) L see several ?iegroes lender Gorilla 
domination. Well treated by their inastcrs. Frog-eating Gorillas 
across the Salt Lake. Bull-headed Gorillas — their mutual hos- 
tility. Green Island Gorillas. More quarrelsome than the Bull- 
heads, and howl much louder. I am called to attend one of the 
princesses. Evident partiality of H. R. H. for me. jfealousy 
and rage of large' red-headed Gorilla. How shall I escape ? 

Ay, how indeed ? Do you wish to know ? Is your curiosity 
excited ? Well, I do know how I escaped. I could tell the 
most extraordinary adventures that happened to me. I could 
show you resemblances to peojDle at home, that would make 
them blue with rage and you crack your sides with laughter, 
* * * # * ^^,-,(-1 ^vhat is the reason I cannot write this 
paper, having all the facts before me ? The reason is, that 
walking down St. James Street yesterday, I met a friend who 
says to me, " Roundabout my boy, have you seen your picture ? 
Here it is ! " And he pulls out a portrait, executed in photog- 
raphy, of your humble servant, as an immense and most un- 
pleasant-featured baboon, with long hairy hands, and called by 
the waggish artist " A Literary Gorilla." O horror ! And now 
you see why I can't play off this joke myself, and moralize on 
the fable, as it has been narrated already de me. 

9 



130 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. 




^^^^^'^^s*-^ 



This group of dusky children of the captivity is copied out 
of a little sketch-book which I carried in many a roundabout 
journey, and will point a moral as well as any other sketch in 
the volume. Yonder drawing was made in a country where 
there was such hospitality, friendship, kindness shown to the 
humble designer, that his eyes do not care to look out for faults, 
or his pen to note them. How they sang ; how they laughed 
and grinned ; how they scraped, bowed, and complimented you 
and each other, those negroes of the cities of the Southern parts 
.of the then United States ! My business kept me in the towns ; 
I was but in one negro-plantation village, and there were only 
women and little children, the men being out a-field. But there 
was plenty of cheerfulness in the huts, under the great trees — 
I speak of what I saw — and amidst the dusky bondsmen of the 
• cities. I witnessed a curious gayety ; heard amongst the black 
.folk endless singing, shouting, and laughter ; and saw on holi- 



A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. 131 

days black gentlemen and ladies arrayed in such splendor and 
comfort as freeborn workmen in our towns seldom exhibit. 
What a grin and bow that dark gentleman performed, who was 
the porter at the colonel's, when he said, " You write your 
name, mas'r, else I will forgot." I am not going into the slavery 
question, I am not an advocate for " the institution," as I know, 
madam, by that angry toss of your head, you are about to 
declare me to be. For domestic purposes, my dear lady, it 
seemed to me about the dearest institution that can be devised. 
In a house in a Southern city you will find fifteen negroes doing 
the work which John, the cook, the housemaid, and the help, do 
perfectly in your own comfortable London house. And these 
fifteen negroes are the pick of a family of some eighty or ninety. 
Twenty are too sick, or too old for work, let us say ; twenty too 
clumsy ; twenty are too young, and have to be nursed and 
watched by ten more.* And master has to maintain the im- 
mense crew to do the work of half a dozen willing hands. No, 
no ; let Mitchell, the exile from poor dear enslaved Ireland, 
wish for a gang of " fat niggers ; " I would as soon you should 
make me a present of a score of Bengal elephants, when I need 
but a single stout horse to pull my brougham. 

How hospitable they were, those Southern men ! In the 
North itself the welcome was not kinder, as I, who have eaten 
Northern and Southern salt, can testify. As for New Orleans, 
in spring-time, — just when the orchards were flushing over with 
peach-blossoms, and the sweet herbs came to flavor the juleps 
— it seemed to me the city of the world where you can eat and 
drink the most and suffer the least. At Bordeaux itself, claret 
is not better to drink than at New Orleans. It was all good — 
believe an expert Robert — from the half-dollar Medoc of the 
public hotel table, to the private gentleman's choicest wine. 
Claret is, somehow, good in that gifted place at dinner, at sup- 
per, and at breakfast in the morning. It is good : it is super- 
abundant — and there is nothing to pay. Find me speaking ill 
of such a country ! When I do, pone me pigris campis : smother 
me in a desert, or let Mississippi or Garonne drown me ! At 
that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse 
than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles ; and not the 
least headache in the morning, I give you my word ; on the con- 
trary, you only wake Avith a sweet refreshing thirst for claret 
and water. They say there is fever there in the autumn : but 

• This was an account given by a gentleman at Richmond of his establishment. Six 
European servants would have kept his house and stables well. " His farm," he said, 
* barely sufficed to maintain the negroes residing on it." 



132 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



not in the spring-time, when the peach-blossoms blush over the 
orchards, and the sweet herbs come to flavor the juleps. 

I was bound from New Orleans to Saint Louis ; and our 
walk was constantly on the Levee, whence we could see a 
hundred of those huge white Mississippi steamers at their 
moorings in the river : " Look," said my friend Lochlomond to 
me, as we stood one day on the quay — " look at that post ! 
Look at that coffee-house behind it ! Sir, last year a steamer 
blew up in the river yonder, just where you see those men 
pulling off in the boat. By that post where you are standing a 
mule was cut in two by a fragment of the burst machinery, 
and a bit of the chimney-stove in that first-floor window of the 
coffee-house, killed a negro who was cleaning knives in the 
top-room ! " I looked at the post, at the coffee-house window, 
at the steamer in which I was going to embark, at my friend, 
with a pleasing interest not divested of melancholy. Yester- 
day, it was the mule, thinks I, who was cut in two : it may be 
eras 7nihi. Why, in the same little sketchbook, there is a draw- 
ing of an Alabama river steamer which blew up on the very next 
voyage after that in which your humble servant was on board ! 
Had I but waited another week, I might have. * * * These in- 
cidents give a queer zest to the voyage down the life-stream in 
America. When our huge, tall, white, pasteboard castle of a 
steamer began to work up stream, every limb in her creaked, 
and groaned, and quivered, so that you might fancy she would 
burst right off. Would she hold together, or would she split 
into ten million of shivers ? O my home and children ! Would 
your humble servant's body be cut in two across yonder chain 
on the Levee, or be precipitated into yonder first floor, so as to 
damage the chest of a black man cleaning boots at the window ? 
The black man is safe for me, thank goodness. But you see 
the little accident w/^^/^/have happened. It has happened ; and 
if to a mule, why not to a more docile animal ? On our journey 
up the Mississippi, I give you my honor we were on fire three 
times, and burned our cook-room down. The deck at night, 
was a great firework — the chimney spouted myriads of stars 
which fell blackening on our garments, sparkling on the deck, 
or gleaming into the mighty stream through which we labored 
— the mighty yellow stream with all its snags. 

How I kept up my courage through these dangers shall 

now be narrated. The excellent landlord of the " Saint Charles 

Hotel," when I was going away, begged me to accept two 

bottles of the very finest Cognac, with his compliments ; and I 

^ found them in my state-room with my luggage. Lochlomond 



A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. 



^Z5 



came to see me off, and as he squeezed my hand at parting. 
" Roundabout," says he, the wine mayn't be very good on 
board, so I have brought a dozen-case of the Medoc which you 
Uked ; " and we grasped together the hands of friendship and 
farewell. Whose boat is this pulling up to the ship ? It is our 
friend Glenlivat, who gave us the dinner on Lake Pontchar- 
train. " Roundabout," says he, " we have tried to do what we- 
could for you, my boy ; and it has been done de bon coeur " (I 
detect a kind tremulousness in the good fellow's voice as he 
speaks). " I say — hem ! — the a — the wine isn't too good on 
board, so I've brought you a dozen of Me'doc for your voyage, 
you know. And God bless you ; and when I come to London 
in May I shall come and see you. Hallo ! here's Johnson come 
to see you off, too ! " 

As I an> a miserable sinner, when Johnson grasped my 
hand, he said, " Mr. Roundabout, you can't be sure of the 
wine on board these steamers, so I thought I would bring you 
a little case of that light claret which you liked at my house." 
Et de trots ! No wonder I could face the Mississippi with so 
much courage supplied to me ! Where are you, honest friends, 
who gave me of your kindness and your cheer ? May I be con- 
siderably boiled, blown up, and snagged, if I speak hard words 
of you. May claret turn sour ere I do ! 

Mounting the stream it chanced that w^e had very few pas- 
sengers. How far is the famous city of Memphis from New 
Orleans ? I do not mean the Egyptian Memphis, but the 
American Memphis, from which to the American Cairo we 
slowly toiled up the river — to the American Cairo at the conflu- 
ence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. And at Cairo we parted 
company from the boat, and from some famous and gifted fel- 
low-passengers who joined us at MemjDhis, and whose pictures 
we had seen in many cities of the South. I do not give the 
names of these remarkable people, unless, by some wondrous 
chance, inventing a name I should light upon that real one 
which some of them bore ; but if you please I will say that 
our fellow passengers whom we took in at Memphis were no 
less personages than the Vermont Giant and the famous 
Bearded Lady of Kentucky and her son. Their pictures I 
had seen in many cities through which I travelled with my own 
little performance. I think the Vermont Giant was a trifle 
taller in his pictures than he was in life (being represented in 
the former as, at least, some two storeys high) : but the lady's 
prodigious beard received no more than justice at the hands of 
the painter ; that portion of it which I saw being really most 



'34 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



black, rich, and curly — I say the portion of beard, for this 
modest or prudent woman kept I don't know how much of the 
beard covered up with a red handkerchief, from which I sup- 
pose it only emerged when she went to bed, or when she ex- 
hibited it professionally. 

The Giant, I must think, was an overrated giant. I have 
known gentlemen, not in the profession, better made, and I 
should say taller, than the Vermont gentleman. A strange 
feeling I used to have at meals ; when, on looking round our 
little society, I saw the Giant, the Bearded Lady of Kentucky, 
the little Bearded Boy of three years old, the Captain, (this I 
think ; but at this distance of time I would not like to make the 
statement on affidavit,) and the three other passengers, all 
with their knives in their mouths making play at the dinner — a 
strange feeling I say it was, and as though I was in a castle of 
ogres. But, after all, why so squeamish ? A few scores of years 
back, the finest gentlemen and ladies of Europe did the like. 
Belinda ate with her knife ; and Saccharissa had only that 
weapon, or a two-pronged fork, or a spoon, for her pease. 
Have you ever looked at Gilray's print of the Prince of Wales, 
a languid voluptuary, retiring after his meal, and noted the 
toothpick which he uses ? * * * You are right, madam ; I 
own that the subject is revolting and terrible. 1 will not pursue 
it. Only — allow that a gentleman, in a shaky steamboat, on a 
dangerous river, in a far-off country, which caught fire three 
times during the voyage — (of course I mean the steamboat, not 
the country,) — seeing a giant, a voracious supercargo, a 
bearded lady, and a little boy, not three years of age, with a 
chin already quite black and curly, all plying their victuals 
down their throats with their knives — allow, madam, that in 
such a company a man had a right to feel a little nervous. I 
dont't know whether you have ever remarked the Indian 
jugglers swallowing their knives, or seen, as I have, a whole 
table of people performing the same trick, but if you look at 
their eyes when they do it, I assure you there is a roll in them 
which is dreadful. 

Apart from this usage, which they practise in common 
with many thousand most estimable citizens, the Vermont gen- 
tleman, and the Kentucky whiskered lady — or did I say the 
reverse ? — whichever you like, my dear sir — were quite quiet, 
modest, unassuming people. She sat working with her needle, 
if I remember right. He, I suppose, slept in the great cabin, 
which was seventy feet long at the least, nor, I am bound to 
say, did I hear in the night any snores or roars, such as you 



A M/SSISSIPPI BUBBLE. 



"35 



would fancy ought to accompany the sleep of ogres. Nay, this 
giant had quite a small appetite, (unless, to be sure, he went 
forward and ate a sheep or two in private with his Iiorrid knife 
— oh, the dreadful thought ! — but in public, I say, he had quite 
a delicate appetite,) and was also a tea-totaller. I don't re- 
member to have heard the lady's voice, though I might, not 
unnaturally, have been curious to hear it. Was her voice a 
deep, rich, magnificent bass ; or was it soft, fluty, and mild ? 
I shall never know now. Even if she comes to this country, I 
shall never go and see her. I have seen her, and for nothing. 

You would have fancied that, as after all we were only some 
half-dozen on board, she might have dispensed with her red 
handkerchief, and talked, and eaten her dinner in comfort : 
but in covering her chin there was a kind of modesty. That 
beard was her profession : that beard brought the public to see 
her : out of her business she wished to put that beard aside as 
it were : as a barrister would wish to put off his wig. I know 
some who carry theirs into private lite, and who mistake you 
and me for jury-boxes when they address us : but these are not 
your modest barristers, not your true gentlemen. 

Well, I own I respected the lady for the modesty with 
which, her public business over, she retired into private life. 
She respected her life, and her beard. That beard having 
done its day's work, she puts it away in a handkerchief ; and 
becomes, as far as in her lies, a private ordinary pe son. All 
public men and women of good sense, I should think, have 
this modesty. When, for instance, in my small way, poor Mrs. 
Brown comes simpering up to me, with her album in one hand, 
a pen in the other, and says, " Ho, ho, dear Mr. Roundabout, 
write us one of your amusing," &c., &c., my beard drops behind 
my handkerchief instantly. Why am I to wag my chin and 
grin for Mrs. Brown's good pleasure ? My dear madam, I 
have been making faces all day. It is my profession. I do 
my comic business with the greatest pains, seriousness, and 
trouble : and with it make, I hope, a not dishonest livelihood. 
If you ask Mons. Blondin to tea, you don't have a rope 
stretched from your garret window to the opposite side of the 
square, and request Monsieur to take his tea out on the centre 
of the rope ? I lay my hand on this waistcoat, and declare that 
not once in the course of our voyage together did I allow the 
Kentucky Giant to suppose I was speculating on his stature, or 
the Bearded Lady to surmise that 1 wished to peep under the 
handkerchief which muffled the lower part of her face. 

" And the more fool you," says some cynic. (I'augh, those 



136 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

cynics, I hate 'em !) Don't you know, sir, that a man of genius 
is pleased to have his genius recognized ; that a beauty Ukes 
to be admired ; that an actor likes to be applauded ; that stout 
old Wellington himself was pleased, and smiled when the peo- 
ple cheered him as he passed ? Suppose you had paid some 
respectful elegant compliment to that lady ? Suppose you had 
asked that giant, if, for once, he would take anything at the 
liquor-bar ? you might have learned a great deal of curious 
knowledge regarding giants and bearded ladies, about whom 
you evidently now know very little. There was that little boy 
of three years old, with a fine beard already, and his little legs 
and arms, as seen out of his little frock, covered with a dark 
down. What a queer little capering satyr ! He was quite 
good-natured, childish, rather solemn. He had a little Norval 
dress, I remember : the drollest little Norval. 

I have said the B. L. had another child. Now this was a 
little girl of some six years old, as fair and as smooth of skin, 
dear madam, as your own darling cherubs. She wandered 
about the great cabin quite melancholy. No one seemed to 
care for her. All the family affections were centred on Master 
Esau yonder. His little beard was beginning to be a little 
fortune already, whereas Miss Rosalba was of no good to the 
family. No one would pay a cent to see her little fair face. 
No wonder the poor little maid was melancholy. As I looked 
at her, I seemed to walk more and more in a fairy tale, and 
more and more in a cavern of ogres. Was this a little foundling 
whom they had picked up in some forest, where lie the picked 
bones of the queen, her tender mother, and the tough old 
defunct monarch, her father ? No. Doubtless they were quite 
good-natured people, these. I don't believe they were unkind 
to the little girl without the mustaches. It may have been 
only my fancy that she repined because she had a cheek no 
more bearded than a rose's. 

Would you wish your own daughter, madam, to have a 
smooth cheek, a modest air, and a gentle feminine behavior, or 
to be — I won't say a whiskered prodigy, like this Bearderd Lady 
of Kentucky — but a masculine wonder, a virago, a female per- 
sonage of more than female strength, courage, wisdom ? Some 
authors, who shall be nameless, are, I know, accused of depict- 
ing the most feeble, brainless, namby-pamby heroines, forever 
whimpering tears and prattling commonplaces. You would 
have the heroine of your novel so beautiful that she should 
charm the captain (or hero, whoever he may be) with her ap- 
pearance ; surprise and confound the bishop with her learning ; 



A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. 



137 



outride the squire and get the brush, and, when he fell from his 
horse, whip out a lancet and bleed him ; rescue from fever and 
death the poor cottager's family whom the doctor had given 
up j make 21 at the butts with the rifle, when the poor captain 
only scored 18 ; give him twenty in fifty at billiards and beat 
him ; and draw tears from the professional Italian people by 
her exquisite performance (of voice and violoncello) in the 
evening ; — I say, if a novelist would be popular with ladies — 
the great novel-readers of the world — this is the sort of heroine 
who would carry him through half a dozen editions. Suppose 
I had asked that Bearded Lady to sing ? Confess, now, miss, 
you would not have been displeased if I had told you that she 
had a voice like Lablache, only ever so much lower. 

My dear, you would like to be a heroine ? You would like 
to travel in triumphal caravans ; to see your effigy placarded 
on city walls ; to have your leve'es attended by admiring crowds, 
all crying out, "Was there ever such a wonderof a woman.'"' 
You would like admiration ? Consider the tax you pay for it. 
You would be alone were you eminent. Were you so distin- 
guished from your neighbors — I will not say by a beard and 
whiskers, that were odious — but by a great and remarkable 
intellectual superiority — would you, do you think, be any the 
happier? Consider envy. Consider solitude. Consider the 
jealousy and torture of mind which this Kentucky lady must 
feel, suppose she should hear that there is, let us say, a 
Missouri prodigy, with a beard larger than hers .'' Consider 
how she is separated from her kind by the possession of that 
wonder of a beard .-' When that beard grows gray, how lonely 
she will be, the poor old thing ! If it falls off, the public ad- 
miration falls off too ; and how she will miss it — the compli- 
ments of the trumpeters, the admiration of the crowd, the 
gilded progress of the car. I see an old woman alone in a 
decrepit old caravan, with cobwebs on the knocker, with a 
blistered ensign flapping idly over the door. Would you like 
to be that deserted person .-' Ah, Chloe ! To be good, to be 
simple, to be modest, to be loved, be thy lot. Be thankful 
thou are not taller, nor stronger, nor richer, nor wiser than the 
rest of the world ! 



138 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



ON LETTS' S DIAR Y. 

Mine is one of your No. 12 diaries, three shillings cloth 
boards ; silk limp, gilt edges, three-and-six ; French morocco, 
tuck ditto, four-and-six. It has two pages, ruled with faint 
lines for memoranda, for every week, and a ruled account at 
the end, for the twelve months from January to December, 
where you may set down your incomings and your expenses. 
I hope yours, my respected reader, are large ; that there are 
many fine round sums of figures on each side of the page : 
liberal on the expenditure side, greater still on the receipt. I 
hope, sir, you will be "a better man," as they say, in '62 than 
in this moribund '61, whose career of life is just coming to its 
terminus. A better man in purse ? in body ? in soul's health ? 
Amen, good sir, in all. Who is there so good in mind, body or 
estate, but bettering won't still be good for him ? O unknown 
Fate, presiding over next year, if you will give me better health, 
a better appetite, a better digestion, a better income, a better 
temper in '62 than you have bestowed in '61, I think your ser- 
vant will be the better for the changes. For instance, I should 
be the better for a new coat. This one, I acknowledge, is very 
old. The family says so. My good friend, who amongst us 
would not be the better if he would give up some old habits ? 
Yes, yes. You agree with me. You take the allegory ? Alas 
at our time of life we don't like to give up those old habits, do 
we } It is ill to change. There is the good old loose, easy, 
slovenly bedgown, laziness, for example. What man of sense 
likes to fling it off and put on a tight guinde prim dress-coat 
that pinches him ? There is the cozy wraprascal, self-indul- 
gence — how easy it is ! How warm I How it always seems 
to fit I You can walk out in it ; you can go down to dinner in 
it. You can say of such what Tully says of his books : Per- 
nodat nobiscufn, peregrinaiiir, riisticatur. It is a little slatternly 
— it is a good deal stained — it isn't becoming — it smells of 
cigar-smoke ; but, allons done ! let the world call me idle and 
sloven. I love my ease better than my neighbor's opinion. I 
live to please myself ; not you, Mr. Dandy, with your supercil- 
ious airs. I am a philosopher. Perhaps I live in my tub, and 

don't make any other use of it . We won't pursue further 

this unsavory metaphor ; but, with regard to some of your old 
habits, let us say — 



ON LETTS'S DIARY. 139 

1. The habit of being censorious, and speaking ill of your 
neighbors. 

2. The habit of getting into a passion with your man-ser- 
vant, your maid-servant, your daughter, wife, &c. 

3. The habit of indulging too much at table. 

4. The habit of smoking in the dining-room after dinner. 

5. The habit of spending insane sums of money in bric-a- 
brac, tall copies, binding, Elzevirs, &c. ; '20 Port, outrageously 
fine horses, ostentatious entertainments, and what not } or, 

6. The habit of screwing meanly, when rich, and chuckling 
over the saving of half a crown, whilst you are poisoning your 
friends and family with bad wine. 

7. The habit of going to sleep immediately after dinner, in- 
stead of cheerfully entertaining Mrs. Jones and the family : or, 

8. Ladies ! The habit of running up bills with the milli- 
ners, and swindling paterfamilias on the house bills. 

9. The habit of keeping him waiting for breakfast. 

ID. The habit of sneering at Mrs. Brown and the Miss 
Browns, because they are not quite du moJide, or quite so gen- 
teel as Lady Smith. 

11. The habit of keeping your wretched father up at balls 
till five o'clock in the morning, when he has to be at his office 
at eleven. 

12. The habit of fighting with each other, dear Louisa, Jane, 
Arabella, Amelia. 

13. The habit of always ordering John Coachman three- 
quarters of an hour before you want him. 

Such habits, I say, sir or madam, if you have had to note in 
your diary of '61, I have not the slightest doubt you will enter 
in your pocket-book of '62. There are habits Nos. 4 and 7, for 
example. I am morally sure that some of us will not give up 
those bad customs, though the women cry out and grumble, 
and scold ever so justly. There are habits Nos. 9 and 13. I 
feel perfectly certain, my dear young ladies, that you will con- 
tinue to keep John Coachman waiting ; that you will continue 
to give the most satisfactory reasons for keeping him waiting : 
and as for (9), you will show that you once (on the ist of April 
last, let us say,) came to breakfast first, and that you are always 
first in consequence. 

Yes ; in our '62 diaries, I fear we may all of us make some 
of the '61 entries. There is my friend Freehand, for instance. 
(Aha ! Master Freehand, how you will laugh to find yourself 
here !) F. is in the habit of spending a little, ever so little, more 
than his income. He shows you how Mrs. Freehand works, 



1 40 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

and works (and indeed, Jack Freehand, if you say she is an 
angel, you don't say too much of her) ; how they toil, and how 
they mend, and patch, and pinch ; and how they cant live on 
their means. And I very much fear — nay, I will bet him half 
a bottle of Gladstone 14^'. per dozen claret — that the account 
which is a little on the wrong side this year, will be a little on 
the wrong side in the next ensuing year of grace. 

A diary. Dies. Hodie. How queer to read are some of 
the entries in the journal ! Here are the records of dinners 
eaten, and gone the way of flesh. The lights burn blue some- 
how, and we sit before the ghosts of victuals. Hark at the 
dead jokes resurging ! Memory greets them with the ghost of 
a smile. Here are the lists of the individuals who have dined 
at your own humble table. The agonies endured before and 
during those entertainments are renewed, and smart again. 
What a failure that special grand dinner was ! How those 
dreadful occasional waiters did break the old china ! What a 
dismal hash poor Mary, the cook, made of the French dish 
which she would try out of Francatdli ! How angry Mrs. Pope 
was at not going down to dinner before Mrs. Bishop ! How 
Trimalchio sneered at your absurd attempt to give a feast ; and 
Harpagon cried out at your extravagance and ostentation ! 
How Lady Almack bullied the other ladies in the drawing- 
room (when no gentlemen were present) : never asked you 
back to dinner again : left her card by her footman : and took 
not the slightest notice of your wife and daughters at Lady 
Hustleby's assembly ! On the other hand, how easy, cozy, 
merry, comfortable, those little dinners were ; got up at one or 
two days' notice ; when everybody was contented ; the soup as 
clear as amber ; the wine as good as Trimalchio's own ; and 
the people kept their carriages waiting, and would not go away 
till midnight ! 

Along with the catalogue of by-gone pleasures, balls, ban- 
quets, and the like, which the pages record, comes a list of 
much more important occurrences, and remembrances of graver 
import. On two days of Dives' diary are printed notices that 
" Dividends are due at the Bank." Let us hope, dear sir, that 
this announcement considerably interests you ; in which case, 
probably, you have no need of the almanac-maker's printed re- 
minder. If you look over poor Jack Reckless's note-book, 
amongst his memoranda of racing odds given and taken, per- 
haps you may read : — " Nabbam's bill, due 29th September, 
142/. 15^-. 6^." Let us trust, as the day has passed, that the 
little transaction here noted has been satisfactorily terminated. 



ON LE TTS'S DIARY. 141 

If you are paterfamilias, and a worthy kind gentleman, no 
doubt you have marked down on your register, 17th December 
(say), " Boys come home." Ah, how carefully that blessed 
day is marked in their little calendars ! In my time it used to 
be, Wednesday, 13th November, " 5 tueeksfrom the holidays ; " 
Wednesday, 20th November, "4 7veeks from the holidays ;^^ 
until sluggish time sped on, and we came to Wednesday, i8th 
December. O rapture ! Do you remember pea-shooters ? I 
think we only had them on going home for holidays from pri- 
vate schools, — at public schools, men are too dignified. And 
then came that glorious announcement, Wednesday, 27th, 
" Papa took us to the Pantomime ; " or if not papa, perhaps 
you condescended to go to the pit, under charge of the foot- 
man. 

That was near the end of the year — and mamma gave you 
a new pocket-book, perhaps, with a little coin, God bless her, 
in the pocket. And that pocket-book was for next year, you 
know ; and, in that pocket-book you had to write down that 
sad day, Wednesday, January 24th, eighteen hundred and never 
mind what, — when Dr. Birch's young friends were expected to 
re-assemble. 

Ah me ! Every person who turns this page over has his own 
little diary, in paper or ruled in his memory tablets, and in 
which are set down the transactions of the now dying year. 
Boys and men, we have our calendar, mothers and maidens. 
For example, in your calendar pocket-book, my good Eliza, 
what a sad, sad day that is — how fondly and bitterly remem- 
bered — when your boy went off to his regiment, to India, 
to danger, to battle perhaps. What a day was that last day at 
home, when, the tall brother sat yet amongst the family, the 
little ones round about him wondering at saddle-boxes, uniforms, 
sword-cases, gun-cases, and other wondrous apparatus of war 
and travel which poured in and filled the hall ; the new dress- 
ing-case for the beard not yet grown ; the great sword case at 
which little brother Tom looks so admiringly ! What a dinner 
that was, that last dinner, when little and grown children assem- 
bled together, and all tried to be cheerful ! What a night was 
that last night, when the young ones were at roost for the last 
time together under the same roof, and the mother lay alone in 
her chamber counting the fatal hours as they tolled one after 
another, amidst their tears, her watching, her fond prayers. 
What a night that was, and yet how quickly the melancholy- 
dawn came ! Only too soon the sun rose over the houses. 
And now in a moment more the city seemed to wake. The 



14^ 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



house began to stir. The family gathers together for the last 
meal. For the last time in the midst of them the widow kneels 
amongst her kneeling children, and falters a prayer in which 
she commits her dearest, her eldest born, to the care of the 
Father of all. O night, what tears you hide — what prayers you 
hear ! And so the nights pass and the days succeed, until that 
one comes when tears and parting shall be no more. 

In your diary, as in mine, there are days marked with sad- 
ness, not for this year only, but for all. On a certain day — 
and the sun perhaps, shining ever so brightly — the house- 
mother comes down to her family with a sad face, which scares 
the children round about in the midst of their laughter and 
prattle. They may have forgotten — but she has not — a day 
which came, twenty years ago it may be, and which she remem- 
bers only too well : the long night-watch ; the dreadful dawning 
and the rain beating at the pane ; the infant speechless, but moan- 
ing in its little crib ; and then the awful calm, the awful smile on 
the sweet cherub face, when the cries have ceased, and the little 
suffering breast heaves no more. Then the children, as they 
see their mother's face, remember this was the day on wliich 
their little brother died. It was before they were born ; but 
she remembers it. And as they pray together, it seems almost 
as if the spirit of the little lost one was hovering round the 
group. So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, 
grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill jour- 
ney, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and 
more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's 
common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and 
feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone. 

In this past year's diary is there any precious day noted on 
which you have made a new friend t This is a piece of good 
fortune bestowed but grudgingly on the old. After a certain 
age a new friend is a wonder, like Sarah's child. Aged persons 
are seldom capable of bearing friendships. Do you remember 
how warmly you loved Jack and Tom when you were at school ; 
what a passionate regard you had for Ned when you were at 
college, and the immense letters you wrote to each other? How 
often do you write, now that postage costs nothing ? There is 
the age of blossoms and sweet budding green : the age of gen- 
erous summer ; the autumn when the leaves drop ; and then 
winter, shivering and bare. Quick, children, and sit at my feet : 
for they are cold, very cold : and it seems as if neither wine nor 
worsted will warm 'em. 

In this past year's diary is there any dismal day noted in 



ON LETTS' S DIARY. 



143 



which you have lost a friend ? In mine there is. I do not 
mean by death. Those who are gone you have. Those who 
departed loving you, love you still ; and you love them always. 
They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true ; they are 
only gone into the next room : and you will presently get up 
and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you 
will be no more seen. As I am in this cheerful mood, I will 
tell you a fine and touching story of a doctor which I heard 
lately. About two years since there was, in our or some other 
city, a famous doctor, into whose consulting-room crowds came 
daily, so that they might be healed. Now this doctor had a 
suspicion that there was something vitally wrong with himself, 
and he went to consult another famous physician at Dublin, or 
it may be at Edinburgh. And he of Edinburgh punched his 
comrade's sides ; and listened at his heart and lungs ; and felt 
his pulse, I suppose ; and looked at his tongue ; and when he 
had done Doctor London said to Doctor Edinburgh, " Doctor, 
how long have I to live .'' " And Doctor Edinburgh said to 
Doctor London, " Doctor, you may last a year." 

Then Doctor London came home, knowing that what Doc- 
tor Edinburgh said was true. And he made up his accounts, 
with man and heaven, I trust. And he visited his patients as 
usual. And he went about healing, and cheering, and soothing 
and doctoring ; and thousands of sick people were benefited by 
him. And he said not a word to his family at home ; but lived 
amongst them cheerful and tender, and calm, and loving; 
though he knew the night was at hand when he should see 
them and work no more. 

And it was winter time, and they came and told him that 
some man at a distance — very sick, but very rich — wanted him ; 
and though Doctor London knew that he was himself at death's 
door, he went to the sick man ; for he knew the large fee would 
be good for his children after him. And he died ; and his 
family never knew until he was gone, that he had been long 
aware of the inevitable doom. 

This is a cheerful carol for Christmas, is it not ? You see, 
in regard to these Roundabout discourses, I never know whether 
they are to be merry or dismal. My hobby has the bit in his 
mouth ; goes his own way ; and trots through a park, and 
paces by a cemetery. Two days since came the printer's little 
emissary, with a note saying, " We are waiting for the Round- 
about Paper ! " A Roundabout Paper about what or whom ? 
How stale it has become, that printed jollity about Christmas ! 
Carols, and wassail-bowls, and holly, and mistletoe, and yule- 



144 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



logs de commands — what heaps of these have we not had fof 
years past ! Well, year after year the season comes. Come 
frost, come thaw, come snow, come rain, year after year my 
neighbor the parson has to make his sermon. They are 
getting together the bonbons, iced cakes, Christmas trees at 
Fortnum and Mason's now. The genii of the theatres are com- 
posing the Christmas pantomime, which our young folks will 
see and note anon in their little diaries. 

And now, brethren, may I conclude this discourse with an 
extract out of that great diary, the newspaper ? I read it but 
yesterday, and it has mingled with all my thoughts since then. 
Here are the two paragraphs, which appeared following each 
other : — 

" Mr. R., the Advocate-General of Calcutta, has been ap- 
pointed to the post of Legislative Member of the Council of 
the Governor-General." 

" Sir R. S., Agent to the Governor-General for Central In- 
dia, died on the 29th of October, of bronchitis." 

These two men, whose different fates are recorded in two 
paragraphs and half a dozen lines of the same newspaper, 
were sisters' sons. In one of the stories by the present writer- 
a man is described tottering " up the steps of the ghaut," hav- 
ing just parted with his child, whom he is despatching to Eng- 
land from India. I wrote this, remembering in long, long dis- 
tant days, such a ghaut, or river-stair, at Calcutta ; and a day 
when, down those steps, to a boat which was in waiting, came 
two children, whose mothers remained on the shore. One of 
those ladies was never to see her boy more ; and he, too, is 
just dead in India, " of bronchitis, on the 2gth October." We 
were first-cousins ; had been little playmates and friends from 
the time of our birth ; and the first house in London to which 
I was taken, was that of our aunt, the mother of his Honor 
the Member of Council. His Honor was even then a gentle- 
man of the long robe, being, in truth, a baby in arms. We In- 
dian children were consigned to a school of which our deluded 
parents had heard a favorable report, but which was governed 
by a horrible little tyrant, who made our young lives so misera- 
ble that I remember kneeling by my little bed of a night, and 
saying, " Pray God, I may dream of my mother 1 " Thence we 
went to a public school ; and my cousin to Addiscombe and to 
India. 

" For thirty-two years," the paper says, " Sir Richmond 
Shakespear faithfully and devotedly served the Government of 
India, and during that period but once visited England, for a 



ON LETTS' S DIARY. 



^^45 



few months and on public duty. In his miUtary capacity he 
saw much service, was present in eight general engagements, 
and was badly wounded in the last. In 1840, when a young 
lieutenant, he had the rare good fortune to be the means of 
rescuing from almost hopeless slavery in Khiva 416 subjects of 
the Emperor of Russia ; and, but two years later, greatly con- 
tributed to the happy recovery of our own prisoners from a 
similar fate in Cabul. Throughout his career this officer was 
ever ready and zealous for the public service, and freely risked 
life and liberty in the discharge of his duties. Lord Canning, 
to mark his high sense of Sir Richmond Shakespear's public 
services, had lately offered him the Chief Commissionership of 
Mysore, which he had accepted, and was about to undertake, 
when death terminated his career." 

When he came to London the cousins and playfellows of 
early Indian days met once again, and shook hands. " Can I 
do anything for you ? " I remember the kind fellow asking. 
He was always asking that question : of all kinsmen ; of all 
widows and orphans ; of all the poor ; of young men who might 
need his purse or his service. I saw a young officer yesterday 
to whom the first words Sir Richmond Shakespear wrote on his 
arrival in India were, " Can I do anything for you ? " His purse 
was at the command of all. His kind hand was always open. 
It was a gracious fate which sent him to rescue widows and 
captives. Where could they have had a champion more chival- 
rous, a protector more loving and tender ? 

I write down his name in my little book, among those of 
others dearly loved, who, too, have been summoned hence. 
And so we meet and part ; we struggle and succeed ; or we fail 
and drop unknown on the way. As we leave the fond mother's 
knee, the rough trials of childhood and boyhood begin ; and 
then manhood is upon us, and the battle of life, with its chances, 
perils, wounds, defeats, distinctions. And Fort William guns 
are saluting in one man's honor,* while the troops are firing 
the last volleys over the other's grave — over the grave of the 
brave, the gentle, the faithful Christian soldier. 

* W. R. obiit March 22, i86a. 
10 



14.6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLTDA Y. 

Most of us tell old stories in our families. The wife and 
children laugh for the hundredth time at the joke. The old 
servants (though old servants are fewer every day) nod and 
smile a recognition at the well-known anecdote. " Don't tell 
that story of Grouse in the gun-room," says Diggory to Mr. 
Hardcastle in the play, " or I must laugh." As we twaddle, 
and grow old and forgetful, we may tell an old story ; or, out 
of mere benevolence, and a wish to amuse a friend when con- 
versation is flagging, disinter a Joe Miller now and then ; but 
the practice is not quite honest, and entails a certain necessity 
of hypocrisy on story hearers and tellers. It is a sad thing, 
to think that a man with what you call a fund of anecdote is a 
humbug, more or less amiable and pleasant. What right have 
I to tell my " Grouse in the gun-room " over and over in the 
presence of my wife, mother, mother-in-law, sons, daughters, 
old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what 
not ? I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable 
imitations of the characters introduced : I mimic Jones's grin, 
Hobbs's squint. Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's 
Scotch accent, to the best of my power : and the family part 
of my audience laughs good-humoredly. Perhaps the stranger, 
for whose amusement the performance is given, is amused by it, 
and laughs too. But this practice continued is not moral. 
This self-indulgence on your part, my dear Paterfamilias, is 
weak, vain — not to say culpable. I can imagine many a worthy 
man, who begins unguardedly to read this page, and comes to the 
present sentence, lying back in his chair, thinking of that story 
which he has told innocently for fifty years, and rather piteously 
owning to himself, " Well, well, it is wrong ; I have no right to 
call on my poor wife to laugh, my daughters to affect to be 
amused, by that old, old jest of mine. And they would have 
gone on laughing, and they would have pretended to be amused, 
to their dying day, if this man had not flung his damper over 
our hilarity." * * * I lay down the pen, and think, "Are 
there any old stories which I still tell myself in the bosom of 
my family ? Have I any ' Grouse in my gun-room ? ' " If there 
are such, it is because my memory fails ; not because I want 
applause, and wantonly repeat myself. You see, men with the 
so-called fund of anecdote will not repeat the same story to the 



JVOTES OF A WEEK'S HO LID A V. 



M7 



same individual ; but they do think that, on a new party, 
the repetition of a joke ever so old may be honorably tried. I 
meet men walking the London street, bearing the best reputa- 
tion, men of anecdotal powers : — I know such, who very likely 
will read this, and say, "Hang the fellow, he means me/" 
And so I do. No — no man ought to tell an anecdote more 
than thrice, let us say, unless he is sure he is speaking only to 
give pleasure to his hearers — unless he feels that it is not a 
mere desire for praise which makes him open his jaws. 

And is it not with writers as with raconteurs ? Ought they 
not to have their ingenuous modesty ? May authors tell old 
stories, and how many times over."" When I come to look at a 
place which I have visited any time these twenty or thirty 
years, I recall not the place merely, but the sensations I had 
at first seeing it, and which are quite different to my feelings 
to-day. The first day at Calais ; the voices of the women 
crying out at night, as the vessel came alongside the pier ; the 
supper at Quillacq's and the flavor of the cutlets and wine ; the 
red-calico canopy under which I slept ; the tiled floor, and the 
fresh smell of the sheets ; the wonderful postilion in his Jack- 
boots and pigtail ;— all return with perfect clearness to my 
mind, and I am seeing them, and not the objects which are 
actually under my eyes. Here is Calais. Yonder is that com- 
missioner I have known this score of years. Here are the 
women screaming and bustling over the baggage ; the people 
at the passport-barrier who take your papers. My good people, 
I hardly see you. You no more interest me than a dozen 
orange-women in Covent Garden, or a shop bookkeeper in 
Oxford Street. But you make me think of a time when you 
were indeed wonderful to behold — when the little French 
soldiers wore white cockades in their shakos — when the dili- 
gence was forty hours going to Paris ; and the great-booted 
postilion as surveyed by youthful eyes from the coupe, with his 
Jurons, his ends of rope for the harness, and his clubbed pigtail, 
was a wonderful being, and productive of endless amusement. 
You young folks don't remember the apple-girls who used to 
follow the diligence up the hill beyond Boulogne, and the de- 
lights of the jolly road ? In making continental journeys with 
young folks, an oldster may be very quiet, and, to outward 
appearance, melancholy ; but really he has gone back to the 
days of his youth, and he is seventeen or eighteen years of age 
(as the case may be), and is amusing himself with all his might. 
He is noting the horses as they come squealing out of the 
post-house yard at midnight j he is enjoying the delicious meals 



148 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

at Beauvais and Amiens, and quaffing ad libitiim the rich table- 
d'hote wine ; he is hail-fellow with the conductor, and alive to 
all the incidents of the road. A man can be alive in i860 and 
1830 at the same time, don't you see ? Bodily, I may be in 
i860, inert, silent, torpid ; but in the spirit I am walking about 
in 1828, let us say; — in a blue dress-coat and brass buttons, a 
sweet figured silk waistcoat (which I button round a slim waist 
with perfect ease), looking at beautiful beings with gigot sleeves 
and tea-tray hats under the golden chestnuts of the Tuileries, 
or round the Place Vendome, where the drapeau blanc is float- 
ing from the statueless column. Shall we go and dine at 
" Bombarda's," near the " Hotel Breteuil," or at the " Cafe 
Virginie } " — Away ! " Bombarda's " and the " Hotel Breteuil " 
have been pulled down ever so long. They knocked down the 
poor oM Virginia Coffee-house last year. My spirit goes and 
dines there. My body, perhaps, is seated with ever so many 
people in a railway-carriage, and no wonder my companions 
find me dull and silent. Have you read Mr. Dale Owen's 
" Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World ? " — (My dear 
sir, it will make your hair stand quite refreshingly on end.) In 
that work you will read that when gentlemen's or ladies' spirits 
travel off a few score or thousand miles to visit a friend, their 
bodies lie quiet and in a torpid state in their beds or in their 
arm-chairs at home. So in this way, I am absent. My soul 
whisks away thirty years back into the past. I am looking out 
anxiously for a beard. I am getting past the age of loving 
Byron's poems, and pretend that I like Wordsworth and Shelley 
much better. Nothing I eat or drink (in reason) disagrees 
with me ; and I know whom I think to be the most lovely 
creature in the world. Ah, dear maid (of that remote but well- 
remembered period), are you a wife or widow now ? — are you 
dead ? — are you thin and withered and old ? — or are you grown 
much stouter, with a false front ? and so forth, 

O Eliza, Eliza ! — Stay, was she Eliza .'' Well, I protest I 
have forgotten what your Christian name was. You know I 
only met you for two days, but your sweet face is before me 
now, and the roses blooming on it are as fresh as in that time 

of May. Ah, dear Miss X , my timid youth and ingenuous 

modesty would never have allowed me, even in my private 
thoughts, to address you otherwise than by your paternal name, 
but that (though I conceal it) I remember perfectly well and 
that your dear and respected father was a brewer. 

Carillon. — I was awakened this morning with the chime 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 



149 



which Antwerp cathedral clock plays at half-hours. The tune 
has been haunting me ever since, as tunes will. You dress, 
eat, drink, walk, and talk to yourself to their tune : their 
inaudible jingle accompanies you all day : you read the sen- 
tences of the paper to their rhythm. I tried uncouthly to 
imitate the tune to the'ladies of the family at breakfast, and 
they say it is " the shadow dance of Dinorah.^'' It may be so. 
I dimly remember that my body was once present during the 
performance of that opera, whilst my eyes were closed, and my 
intellectual faculties dormant at the back of the box ; howbeit, 
I have learned that shadow dance from hearing it pealing up 
ever so high in the air, at night, morn, noon. 

How pleasant to lie awake and listen to the cheer}'^ peal ! 
whilst the old city is asleep at midnight, or waking up rosy at 
sunrise, or basking in noon, or swept by the scudding rain 
which drives in gusts over the broad places, and the great 
shining river ; or sparkling in snow which dresses up a hundred 
thousand masts, peaks and towers ; or wrapt round with thunder- 
cloud canopies, before which the white gables shine whiter ; 
day and night the kind little carillon plays its fantastic melodies 
overhead. The bells go on ringing. Quot vivos voca?it, mortuos 
plangunt, fidgura frangunt ; so on to the past and future tenses, 
and for how many nights, days, and years ! Whilst the French 
were pitching their /u/gura into Chasse's citadel, the bells went 
on ringing quite cheerfully. Whilst the scaffolds were up and 
guarded by Alva's soldiery, and regiments of penitents, blue, 
black, and gray, poured out of churches and convents, droning 
their dirges, and marching to the place of the Hotel de Ville, 
where heretics and rebels were to meet their doom, the bells 
up yonder were chanting at their appointed half-hours and 
quarters, and rang the mauvais quart dWicure for many a poor 
soul. This bell can see as far away as the towers and dykes 
of Rotterdam. That one can call a greeting to St. Ursula's at 
Brussels, and toss a recognition to that one at the town-hall of 
Oudenarde, and remember how after a great struggle there a 
hundred and fifty years ago the whole plain was covered with 
the flying French cavalry — Burgundy, and Berri, and the Chev- 
alier of St. George flying like the rest. " What is your clamor 
about Oudenarde ? " says another bell (Bob Major this one 
must be). " Be still, thou querulous old clapper ! / can see 
over to Hougoumont and St. John. And about forty-five years 
since, I rang all through one Sunday in June when there was 
such a battle going on in the corn-fields there, as none of you 
others ever heard tolled of. Yes, from morning service until 



'5° 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



after vespers, the French and EngUsh were all at it, ding-dong." 
And then calls of business intervening, the bells have to give 
up their private jangle, resume their professional duty, and 
sing their hourly chorus out of Dhiorah. 

What a prodigious distance those bells can be heard ! I was 
awakened this morning to their tune, I say. I have been hear- 
ing it constantly ever since. And this house whence I write, 
Murray says, is two hundred and ten miles from Antwerp. And 
it is a week off ; and there is the bell still jangling its shadow 
dance out of Dinorah. An audible shadow you understand, 
and an invisible sound, but quite distinct ; and a plague take 
the tune ! 

UisfDER THE Bells. — Who has not seen the church under 
the bells ? Those lofty aisles, those twilight chapels, that cum- 
bersome pulpit with its huge carvings, that wide gray pavement 
flecked with various light from the jewelled windows, those 
famous pictures between the voluminous columns over the 
altars, which twinkle with their ornaments, their votive little 
silver hearts, legs, limbs, their little guttering tapers, cups of 
sham roses, and what not ? I saw two regiments of little 
scholars creeping in and forming square, each in its appointed 
place, under the vast roof ; and teachers presently coming to 
them. A stream of light from the jewelled windows beams 
slanting down upon each little squad of children, and the tall 
background of the church retires into a grayer gloom. Patter- 
ing little feet of laggards arriving echo through the great nave. 
They trot in and join their regiments, gathered under the slant- 
ing sunbeams. What are they learning ? Is it truth ? Those 
two gray ladies with their books in their hands in the midst of 
these little people have no doubt of the truth of every word 
they have printed under their eyes. Look, through the windows 
jewelled all over with saints, the light comes streaming down 
from the sky, and heaven's own illuminations paint the book ! 
A sweet, touching picture indeed it is, that of the little children 
assembled in this immense temple, which has endured for ages, 
and grave teachers bending over them. Yes, the picture is 
very pretty of the children and their teachers, and their book — 
but the text ? Is it the truth, the only truth, and nothing but 
the truth ? If I thought so, I would go and sit down on the 
form cum parvulis, and learn the precious lesson with all my 
heart. 

Beadle. — But I submit, an obstacle to conversions is the 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HO LI DA Y. 



151 



intrusion and impertinence of that Swiss fellow with the baldric 
— the officer who answers to the beadle of the British Islands, 
and is pacing about the church with an eye on the congrega- 
tion. Now the boast of Catholics is that their churches are 
open to all ; but in certain places and churches there are ex- 
ceptions. At Rome I have been into St. Peter's at all hours : 
the doors are always open, the lamps are always burning, the 
faithful are forever kneeling at one shrine or the other. But 
at Antwerp not so. In the afternoon you can go to the church, 
and be civilly treated ; but you must pay a franc at the side 
gate. In the forenoon the doors are open, to be sure, and 
there is no one to levy an entrance fee. I was standing ever 
so still, looking through the great gates of the choir at the 
twinkling lights, and listening to the distant chants of the 
priests performing the service, when a sweet chorus from the 
organ-loft broke out behind me overhead, and I turned round. 
My friend the drum-major ecclesiastic was down upon me in a 
moment. " Do not turn your back to the altar during divine 
service," says he, in very intelligible English. I take the 
rebuke, and turn a soft right-about face, and listen awhile as 
the service continues. See it I cannot, nor the altar and its 
ministrants. We are separated from these by a great screen 
and closed gates of iron, through which the lamps glitter and 
the chant comes by gusts only. Seeing a score of children 
trotting down a side aisle, I think I may follow them. I am 
tired of looking at that hideous old pulpit with its grotesque 
monsters and decorations. I slip off to the side aisle ; but my 
friend the drum-major is instantly after me — almost I thought 
he was going to lay hands on me. " You mustn't go there," 
says he ; " you mustn't disturb the service." I was moving as 
quietly as might be, and ten paces off there were twenty children 
kicking and clattering at their ease. I point them out to the 
Swiss. " They come to pray," says he. " You don't come to 
pray, you " " When I come to pay," says I, " I am wel- 
come," and with this withering sarcasm, I walk out of church 
in a huff. I don't envy the feelings of that beadle after re- 
ceiving point blank such a stroke of wit. 

Leo Belgicus. — Perhaps you will say after this I am a pre- 
judiced critic. I see the pictures in the cathedral fuming under 
the rudeness of that beadle, or, at the lawful hours and prices, 
pestered by a swarm of shabby touters, who come behind me 
chattering in bad English, and who would have me see the 
sights through their mean, greedy eyes. Better see Rubens 



152 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



anywhere than in a church. At the Academy, for example, 
where you may study him at your leisure. But at church ? — I 
would as soon ask Alexandre Dumas for a sermon. Either 
would paint you a martyrdom very fiercely and picturesquely — ■• 
■vr.ithing muscles, flaming coals, scowling captains and execu- 
tioners, swarming groups, and light, shade, color, most dexter- 
ously brilliant or dark ; but in Rubens I am admiring the per- 
former rather than the piece. With what astonishing rapidity 
he travels over his canvas ; how tellingly the cool lights and 
warm shadows are made to contrast and relieve each other ; 
how that blazing, blowsy penitent in yellow satin and glittering 
hair carries down the stream of light across the picture ! This 
is the way to work, my boys, and earn a hundred florins a day. 
See ! I am as sure of my line as a skater of making his figure 
of eight ! and down with a sweep goes a brawny arm or a flow- 
ing curl of drapery. The figures arrange themselves as if by 
magic. The paint-pots are exhausted in furnishing brown 
shadows. The pupils look wondering on, as the master careers 
over the canvas. Isabel or Helena, wife No. i or No. 2, are 
sitting by, buxom, exuberant, ready to be painted ; and the 
children are boxing in the corner, waiting till they are wanted 
to figure as cherubs in the picture. Grave burghers and gen- 
tlefolks come in on a visit. There are oysters and Rhenish 
always ready on yonder table. Was there ever such a painter.!* 
He has been an ambassador, an actual Excellency, and what 
better man could be chosen ? He speaks all the languages. 
He earns a hundred florins a day. Prodigious ! Thirty-six 
thousand five hundred florins a year. Enormous ! He rides 
out to his castle with a score of gentlemen after him, like the 
Governor. That is his own portrait as St. George. You know 
he is an English knight ? Those are his two wives as the two 
Maries. He chooses the handsomest wives. He rides the 
handsomest horses. He paints the handsomest pictures. He 
gets the handsomest prices for them. That slim young Van 
Dyck, who was his pupil, has genius too, and is painting all the 
noble ladies in England, and turning the heads of some of 
them. And Jordaens — what a droll dog and clever fellow ! 
Have you seen his fat Silenus ? The master himself could not 
paint better. And his altar-piece at St. Bavon's ? He can paint 
you anything, that Jordaens can — a drunken jollification of 
boors and doxies, or a martyr howling with half his skin off. 
What a knowledge of anatomy ! But there is nothing like the 
master — nothing. He can paint you his thirty-six thousand 
five hundred florins' worth a year. Have you heard of what 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 153 

ne has done for the French Court ? Prodigious ! I can't look 
at Rubens' pictures without fancying I see that handsome 
figure swaggering before the canvas. And Hans Hemmelinck 
at Bruges ? Have you never seen that dear old hospital of St. 
John, on passing the gate of which you enter into the fifteenth 
century ? I see the wounded soldier still lingering in the house, 
and tended by the kind gray sisters. His little panel on its easel 
is placed at the light. He covers his board with the most won- 
drous, beautiful little figures, in robes as bright as rubies and 
amethysts. I think he must have a magic glass, in which he 
catches the reflection of little cherubs with many-colored wings, 
very little and bright. Angels, in long crisp robes of white, 
surrounded with haloes of gold, come and flutter across the 
mirror, and he draws them. He hears mass every day. He 
fasts through Lent. No monk is more austere and holy than 
Hans. Which do you love best to behold, the lamb or the 
lion ? the eagle rushing through the storm, and pouncing may- 
hap on carrion ; or the linnet warbling on the spray ? 

By much the most delightful of the Christopher ?,&\. of Rubens 
to my mind (and ego is introduced on these occasions, so that 
the opinion may pass only for my own, at the reader's humble 
service to be received or declined,) is the " Presentation in the 
Temple : " splendid in color, in sentiment sweet and tender, 
finely conveying the story. To be sure, all the others tell their 
tale unmistakably — witness that coarse " Salutation," that 
magnificent " Adoration of the Kings " (at the Museum), by 
the same strong downright hands ; that w^onderful " Commun- 
ion of St. Francis," which, I think, gives the key to the artist's 
faire better that any of his performances. I have passed hours 
before that picture in my time, trying and sometimes fancying 
I could understand by what masses and contrasts the artist ar- 
rived at his effect. In many others of the pictures parts of his 
method are painfully obvious, and you see how grief and agony 
are produced by blue lips, and eyes rolling bloodshot with 
dabs of vermilion. There is something simple in the practice. 
Contort the eyebrow sufficiently, and place the eyeball near it, — 
by a few lines you have anger or fierceness depicted. Give me 
a mouth with no special expression, and pop a dab of carmine 
at each extremity — and there are the lips smiling. This is art 
if you will, but a very naive kind of art : and now you know the 
trick, don't you see how easy it is ? 

Tu QuoQUE. — Now you know the trick, suppose you take a 
canvas and see whether you can do it ? There are brushes, 



154 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



palettes, and gallipots full of paint and varnish. Have you 
tried, my dear sir — you, who set up to be a connoisseur ? Have 
you tried ? I have — and many a day. And the end of the 
day's labor? O dismal conclusion! Is this puerile niggling, 
this feeble scrawl, this impotent rubbish, all you can produce — 
you, who but now found Rubens commonplace and vulgar, and 
were pointing out the tricks of his mystery ? Pardon, O great 
chief, magnificent master and poet ! You can do. We critics, 
who sneer and are wise, can but pry, and measure, and doubt, 
and carp. Look at the lion. Did you ever see such a gross, 
shaggy, mangy, roaring brute ? Look at him eating lumps of 
raw meat — positively bleeding, and raw and tough — till, faugh ! 
it turns one's stomach to see him — O the coarse wretch ! Yes, 
but he is a lion. Rubens has lifted his great hand, and the 
mark he has made has endured for two centuries, and we still 
continue wondering at him, and admiring him. What a 
strength in that arm ! What splendor of will hidden behind 
that tawny beard, and those honest eyes ! Sharpen your pen, 
my good critic. Shoot a feather into him ; hit him, and make 
him wince. Yes, you may hit him fair, and make him bleed, 
too ; but, for all that, he is a lion — a mighty, conquering, gen- 
erous, rampagious Leo Belgicus — monarch of his wood. And 
he is not dead yet, and I will not kick at him. 

Sir Antony. — In that " Pieta " of Van Dyck, in the Mu- 
seum, have you ever looked at the yellow-robed angel, with the 
black scarf thrown over her wings and robe ? What a charm- 
ing figure of grief and beauty ! What a pretty compassion it 
inspires ! It soothes and pleases me like a sweet rhythmic 
chant. See how delicately the yellow robe contrasts with the 
blue sky behind, and the scarf binds the two ! If Rubens lacked 
grace. Van Dyck abounded in it. What a consummate ele- 
gance ! What a perfect cavalier ! No wonder the fine ladies 
in England admired Sir Antony. Look at 

Here the clock strikes three, and the three gendarmes who 
keep the Musee cry out, " Allans ! Soriotis ! II estii-ois hcures ! 
AUezI Sortez /" and they skip out of the gallery as happy as 
boys running from school. And we must go too, for though 
many stay behind — many Britons with Murray's handbooks in 
their handsome hands — they have paid a franc for entrance- 
fee, you see : and we knew nothing about the franc for entrance 
until those gendarmes with sheathed sabres had driven us out 
of this Paradise. 

But it was good to go and drive on the great quays, and see 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HO LID A V. 



iSS 



the ships unlading, and by the citadel, and wonder howabouts 
and whereabouts it was so strong. We expect a citadel to looks 
like Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein at least. But in this one there 
is nothing to see but a flat plain and some ditches, and some 
trees, and mounds of uninteresting green. And then I remem- 
ber how there was a boy at school, a little dumpy fellow of no 
personal appearance whatever, who couldn't be overcome except 
by a much bigger champion, and the immensest quantity of 
thrashing. A perfect citadel of a boy, with a General Chasse 
sitting in that bomb-proof casemate, his heart, letting blow after 
blow come thumping about his head, and never thinking of 
giving in. 

And we go home, and we dine in the company of Britons, at 
the comfortable Hotel du Pare, and we have bought a novel 
apiece for a shilling, and every half-hour the sweet carillon 
plays the waltz from Dinar ah in the air. And we have been 
happy ; and it seems about a month since we left London yes- 
terday ; and nobody knows where we are, and we defy care and 
the postman. 

Spoorweg. — Vast green flats, speckled by spotted cows, 
and bound by a gray frontier of windmills ; shining canals 
stretching through the green ; odors like those exhaled from 
the Thames in the dog-days, and a fine pervading smell of 
cheese ; little trim houses, with tall roofs, and great windows of 
many panes ; gazebos, or summer-houses, hanging over-pea- 
green canals ; kind-looking, dumpling-faced farmers' women, 
with laced caps and golden frontlets and earrings ; about the 
houses and towns which we pass a great air of comfort and 
neatness ; a queer feeling of wonder that you can't understand 
what your fellow-passengers are saying, the tone of whose 
voices, and a certain comfortable dowdiness of dress, are so 
like our own ; — whilst we are remarking on these sights, sounds, 
smells, the little railway journey from Rotterdam to the Hague 
comes to an end. I speak to the railway porters and hackney 
coachman in English, and they reply in their own language, 
and it seems somehow as if we understood each other perfectly. 
The carriage drives to the handsome, comfortable, cheerful 
hotel. We sit down a score at the table ; and there is one for- 
eigner and his wife, — I mean every other man and woman at 
dinner are English. As we are close to the sea, and in the 
midst of endless canals, we have no fish. We are reminded of 
dear England by the noble prices which we pay for wines. I 
confess I lost my temper yesterday at Rotterdam, where I had 



156 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

to pay a florin for a bottle of ale (the water not being drinkable, 
and country or Bavarian beer not being genteel enough for the 
hotel) ; — I confess, I say, that my fine temper was ruffled, when 
the bottle of pale ale turned out to be a pint bottle : and I 
meekly told the waiter that I had bought beer at Jerusalem at a 
less price. But then Rotterdam is eighteen hours from London, 
and the steamer with the passengers and beer comes up to the 
hotel windows ; whilst to Jerusalem they have to carry the ale 
on camels' backs from Beyrout or Jaffa, and through hordes of 
marauding Arabs, who evidently don't care for pale ale, though 
I am told it is not forbidden in the Koran. Mine would have 
been very good, but I choked with rage whilst drinking it. A 
florin for a bottle, and that bottle having the words " imperial 
pint," in bold relief, on the surface ! It was too much. I in- 
tended not to say anything about it ; but I must speak. A 
florin a bottle, and that bottle a pint! Oh, for shame! for 
shame ! I can't cork down any indignation ; I froth up with 
fury ; I am pale with wrath, and bitter with scorn. 

As we drove through the old city at night, how it swarmed 
and hummed with life ! What a special clatter, crowd, and 
outcry there was in the Jewish quarter, where myriads of young 
ones were trotting about the fishy street ! Why don't they 
have lamps ? We passed by canals seeming so full that a pail- 
ful of water more would overflow the place. The laquais-de- 
place calls out the names of the buildings : the town-hall, the 
cathedial the arsenal, the synagogue, the statue of Erasmus. 
Get along ! We know the statue of Erasmus well enough. We 
pass over drawbridges by canals where thousands of barges 
are at roost. At roost — at rest ! Shall we have rest in those 
bedrooms, those ancient lofty bedrooms, in that inn where we 
have to pay a florin for a pint of pa — psha ! at the " New Bath 
Hotel " on the Boompjes t If this dreary edifice is the " New 
Bath," what must the Old Bath be like ? As I feared to go to 
bed, I sat in the coffee-room as long as I might ; but three 
young men were imparting their private adventures to each 
other with such freedom and liveliness that I felt I ought not 
to listen to their artless prattle. As I put the light out, and 
felt the bedclothes and darkness overwhelm me, it was with an 
awful sense of terror — that sort of sensation which I should 
think going down in a diving-bell would give. Suppose the 
apparatus goes wrong, and they don't understand your signal 
to mount ? Suppose your matches miss fire when you wake ; 
when you want them, when you will have to rise in half an hour, 
and do battle with the horrid enemy who crawls on you in the 




LITTLE DUTCHMEN. 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 



157 



darkness ? I protest I never was more surprised than when I 
woke and beheld the Hght of dawn. Indian birds and strange 
trees were visible on the ancient gilt hangings of the lofty cham- 
ber, and through the windows the Boompjes and the ships along 
the quay. We have all read of deserters being brought out, and 
made to kneel, with their eyes bandaged, and hearing the word 
to " Fire " given ! I declare I underwent all the terrors of exe- 
cution that night, and wonder how I ever escaped unwounded. 
But if ever I go to the " Bath Hotel," Rotterdam, again, I 
am a Dutchman. A guilder for a bottle of pale ale, and that 
bottle a pint ! Ah ! for shame — for shame ! 

Mine Ease in Mine Inn. — Do you object to talk about 
inns .'' It always seems to me to be very good talk. Walter 
Scott is full of inns. In " Don Quixote " and " Gil Bias " 
there is plenty of inn-talk. Sterne, Fielding, and Smollett con- 
stantly speak about them ; and, in their travels, the last two 
tot up the bill, and describe the dinner quite honestly ; whilst 
Mr. Sterne becomes sentimental over a cab, and weeps gener- 
ous tears over a donkey. 

How I admire and wonder at the information in Murray's 
Handbooks — wonder how it is got, and admire the travellers 
who get it. For instance, you read : Amiens (please select 
your towns), 60,000 inhabitants. Hotels, &c. — " Lion d'Or," 
good and clean. " Le Lion d'Argent," so so. " Le Lion 
Noir," bad, dirty, and dear. Now say, there are three travel- 
lers — three inn-inspectors, who are sent forth by Mr. Muray 
on a great commission, and who stop at every inn in the world. 
The eldest goes to the " Lion d'Or " — capital house, good 
table-d'hote, excellent wine, moderate charges. The second 
commissioner tries the " Silver Lion " — tolerable house, bed, 
dinner, bill and so forth. But fancy Commissioner No. 3 — the 
poor fag, doubtless, and boots of the party. He has to go to 
the " Lion Noir." He knows he is to have a bad dinner — he 
eats it uncomplainingly. He is to have bad wine. He swal- 
lows it, grinding his wretched teeth, and aware that he will be 
unwell in consequence. He knows he is to have a dirty bed, 
and what he is to expect there. He pops out the candle. He 
sinks into those dingy sheets. He delivers over his body to 
the nightly tormentors, he pays an exorbitant bill, and he 
writes down, " Lion Noir, bad, dirty, dear." Next day the 
commission sets out for Arras, we will say, and they begin 
again: " Le Cochon d'Or," "Le Cochon d'Argent," " Le 
Cochon Noir " — and that is poor Boots's inn, of course. What 



158 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

a life that poor man must lead ! What horrors of dinners he 
has to go through ! What a hide he must have ! And yet not 
impervious ; for unless he is bitten, how is he to be able to 
warn others ? No ; on second thoughts, you will perceive that 
he ought to have a very delicate skin. The monsters ought to 
troop to him eagerly, and bite him instantaneously and freely, 
so that he may be able to warn all future handbook buyers of 
their danger. I fancy this man devoting himself to danger, to 
dirt, to bad dinners, to sour wine, to damp beds, to midnight 
agonies, to extortionate bills. I admire him, I thank him. 
Think of this champion, who devotes his body for us — this 
dauntless gladiator going to do battle alone in the darkness, 
with no other armor than a light helmet of cotton, and a lorica 
of calico. I pity and honor him. Go, Spartacus ! Go, de- 
voted man — to bleed, to groan, to suffer — and smile in silence 
as the wild beasts assail thee ! 

How did I come into this talk ? I protest it was the word 
inn set me off — and here is one, the " Hotel de Belle Vue," 
at the Hague, as comfortable, as handsome, as cheerful, as any 
I ever took mine ease in. And the Bavarian beer, my dear 
friend, how good and brisk and light it is ! Take another glass 
— it refreshes and does not stupefy — and then we will sally out, 
and see the town and the park and the pictures. 

The prettiest little brick city, the pleasantest little park to 
ride in, the neatest comfortable people walking about, the canals 
not unsweet, and busy and picturesque with old world life. 
Rows upon rows of houses, built with the neatest little bricks, 
with windows fresh painted, and tall doors polished and carved 
to a nicety. What a pleasant spacious garden our inn has, all 
sparkling with autumn flowers, and bedizened with statues ! 
At the end is a row of trees, and a summer-house, over the 
canal, where you might go and smoke a pipe with Mynheer Van 
Dunck, and quite cheerfully catch the ague. Yesterday, as we 
passed, they were making hay, and stacking it in a barge which 
was lying by the meadow, handy. Round about Kensington 
Palace there are houses, roofs, chimneys, and bricks like these. 
I feel that a Dutchman is a man and a brother. It is very 
funny to read the newspaper, one can understand it somehow. 
Sure it is the neatest, gayest little city — scores and hundreds 
of mansions looking like Cheyne Walk, or the ladies' schools 
about Chiswick and Hackney. 

Le Gros Lot. — To a few lucky men the chance befalls of 
reaching fame at once, and (if it is of any profit 7noritur6) re- 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 



159 



taining the admiration of tlie world. Did poor Oliver, when he 
was at Leyden yonder, ever think that he should paint a little 
picture which should secure him the applause and pity of all 
Europe for a century after ? He and Sterne drew the twenty 
thousand prize of fame. The latter had splendid instalments 
during his lifetime. The ladies pressed round him ; the wits 
admired him, the fashion hailed the successor of Rabelais. 
Goldsmith's little gem was hardly so valued until later days. 
Their works still form the wonder and delight of the lovers of 
English art ; and the pictures of the Vicar and Uncle Toby are 
among the masterpieces of our English school. Here in the 
Hague Gallery is Paul Potter's pale, eager face, and yonder is 
the magnificent work by which the young fellow achieved his 
fame. How did you, so young, come to paint so well ? What 
hidden power lay in that weakly lad that enabled him to achieve 
such a wonderful victory ? Could little Mozart, when he was 
five years old, tell you how he came to play those wonderful 
sonatas ? Potter was gone out of the world before he was 
thirty, but left this prodigy (and I know not how many more 
specimens of his genius and skill) behind him. The details of 
this admirable picture are as curious as the effect is admirable 
and complete. The weather being unsettled, and clouds and 
sunshine in the gusty sky, we saw in our little tour numberless 
Paul Potters — the meadows streaked with sunshine and spotted 
with the cattle, the city twinkling in the distance, the thunder- 
clouds glooming overhead. Napoleon carried off the picture 
{vide Murray) amongst the spoils of his bow and spear to 
decorate his triumph of the Louvre. If I were a conquering 
prince, I would have this picture certainly, and the Raphael 
"Madonna" from Dresden, and the Titian "Assumption" 
from Venice, and the matchless Rembrandt of the " Dissec- 
tion." The prostrate nations would howl with rage as my gen- 
darmes took off the pictures, nicely packed, and addressed 
to " Mr. the Director of my Imperial Palace of the Louvre, 
at Paris. This side uppermost." The Austrians, Prussians, 
Saxons, Italians, &c., should be free to come and visit my 
capital, and bleat with tears before the pictures torn from their 
native cities. Their ambassadors would meekly remonstrate, 
and with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of despair 
occasioned by the absence of the beloved works of art. Bah !_ 
I would offer them a pinch of snuff out of my box as I walked 
along my gallery, with their Excellencies cringing after me. 
Zenobia was a fine woman and a queen, but she had to walk in, 
Aurelian's triumph. The procede \iz.s peu delicat 1 Eti usez vous 



l6o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

mon cher monsieur f (The marquis says the " Macaba " is deli- 
cious.) What a splendor of color there is in that cloud ? 
What a richness, what a freedom of handling, and what a mar- 
vellous precision ! I trod upon your Excellency's corn ? — a 
thousand pardons. His Excellency grins and declares that he 
rather likes to have his corns trodden on. Were you ever very 
angry with Soult — about that Murillo which we have bought? 
The veteran loved that picture because it saved the life of a 
fellow-creature — the fellow-creature who hid it, and whom the 
Duke intended to hang unless the picture was forthcoming. 

We gave several thousand pounds for it — how many thou- 
sand ? About its merit is a question of taste which we will not 
here argue. If you choose to place Murillo in the first class of 
painters, founding his claim upon these Virgin altar-pieces, I 
am your humble servant. Tom Moore painted altar-pieces as 
well as Milton, and warbled Sacred Songs and Loves of the 
Angels after his fashion. I wonder did Watteau ever try his- 
torical subjects ? And as for Greuze, you know that his heads 
will fetch I, coo/., 1,500/., 2,000/. — as much as a Sevres "ca- 
baret " of Rose du Barri. If cost price is to be your criterion 
of worth, what shall we say to that little receipt for 10/. 
for the copyright of " Paradise Lost," which used to hang in 
old Mr. Rogers' room .? When living painters, as frequently 
happens in our days, see their pictures sold at auctions for four 
or five times the sums which they originally received, are they 
enraged or elated ? A hundred years ago the state of the 
picture-market was different : that dreary old Italian stock was 
much higher than at present ; Rembrandt himself, a close man, 
was known to be in difficulties. If ghosts are fond of -^^oney 
still, what a wrath his must be at the present value »=i his 
works ! 

The Hague Rembrandt is the greatest and grandest of all 
his pieces to my mind. Some of the heads are as sweetly and 
lightly painted as Gainsborough ; the faces not ugly, but deli- 
cate and high-bred ; the exquisite gray tones are charming to 
mark and study ; the heads not plastered, but painted with a 
free, liquid brush : the result, one of the great victories won by 
this consummate chief, and left for the wonder and delight of 
succeeding ages. 

The humblest volunteer in the ranks of art, who has served 
a campaign or two ever so ingloriously, has at least this good 
fortune of understanding, or fancying he is able to under- 
stand, how the battle has been fought, and how the engaged 
general won it. This is the Rhinelander's most brilliant 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. i6i 

achievement — victory along the whole line. The "Night- 
watch" at Amsterdam is magnificent in parts, but on the side 
to the spectator's right, smoky and dim. The " Five Masters 
of the Drapers " is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, 
massive power. What words are these to express a picture ! 
to describe a description ! I once saw a moon riding in the 
sky serenely, attended by her sparkling maids of honor, and a 
little lady said, with an air of great satisfaction, " I must sketch 
it." Ah, my dear lady, if with an H. B., a Bristol board, and a 
bit of india-rubber, you can sketch the starry firmament on 
high, and the moon in her glory, I make you my compli- 
ment ! I can't sketch " The Five Drapers " v/ith any ink or 
pen at present at command — but can look with all my eyes, 
and be thankful to have seen such a masterpiece. 

They say he was a moody, ill-conditioned man, the old 
tenant of the mill. What does he think of the "Vander 
Heist" which hangs opposite his "Night-watch," and which is 
one of the great pictures of the world ? It is not painted by 
so great a man as Rembrandt ; but there it is — to see it is 
an event of your life. Having beheld it you have lived in 
the year 1648, and celebrated the treaty of Munster. You 
have shaken the hands of the Dutch Guardsmen, eaten from 
their platters, drunk their Rhenish, heard their jokes, as they 
wagged their jolly beards. The Amsterdam Catalogue dis- 
courses thus about it : — a model catalogue : it gives you the 
prices paid, the signatures of the painters, a succinct descrip- 
tion of the work. 

" This masterpiece represents a banquet of the civic guard, 
which took place on the iSth June, 1648, in the great hall of 
the St. Joris Doele, on the Singel at Amsterdam, to celebrate 
the conclusion of the Peace at Munster. The thirty-five figures 
composing the picture are all portraits. 

" 'The Captain Witse ' is placed at the head of the table, 
and attracts our attention first. He is dressed in black velvet, 
his breast covered with a cuirass, on his head a broad-brimmed 
black hat with white plumes. He is comfortably seated on a 
chair of black oak, with a velvet cushion, and holds in his left 
hand, supported on his knee, a magnificent drinking horn, sur- 
rounded by a St. George destroying the dragon, and ornamented 
with olive leaves. The captain's features express cordiality 
and good-humor; he is grasping theliand of 'Lieutenant Van 
Wavern ' seated near him, in a habit of dark gray, with lace 
and buttons of gold, lace-collar and wristbands, his feet 
crossed, with boots of yellow leather, with large tops, and gold 



l62 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

spurs, on his head a black hat and dark -brown plumes. Behind 
him, at the centre of the picture, is the standard-bearer, 'Jacob 
Banning,' in an easy martial attitude, hat in hand, his right 
hand on his chair, his right leg on his left knee. He holds the 
flag of blue silk, in which the Virgin is embroidered (such a silk ! 
such a flag ! such a piece of painting ?), emblematic of the town 
of Amsterdam. The banner covers his shoulder, and he looks 
towards the spectator frankly and complacently. 

"The man behind him is probably one of the sergeants. 
His head is bare. He wears a cuirass, and yellow gloves, gray 
stockings, and boots with large tops, and kneecaps of cloth. He 
has a napkin on his knees, and in his hand a piece of ham, a 
slice of bread, and a knife. The old man behind is probably, 
'William the Drummer.' He has his hat in his right hand, 
and in his left a gold-footed wineglass, filled with white wine. 
He wears a red scarf, and a black satin doublet, with little 
slashes of yellow silk. Behind the drummer, two matchlock- 
men are seated at the end of the table. One in a large black 
habit, a napkin on his knee, a hnusse-col of iron, and a linen scarf 
and collar. He is eating with his knife. The other holds a 
long glass of white wine. Four musketeers, with different 
shaped hats, are behind these, one holding a glass, the three 
others with their guns on their shoulders. Other guests are 
placed between the personage who is giving the toast and the 
standard-bearer. One with his hat off, and his hand uplifted, 
is talking to another. The second is carving a fowl. A third 
holds a silver plate ; and another, in the background, a silver 
■flagon, from which he fills a cup. The corner behind the cap- 
tain is filled by two seated personages, one of whom is peeling 
an orange. Two others are standing, armed with halberts, of 
whom one holds a plumed hat. Behind him are three other 
individuals, one of them holding a pewter pot, on which the 
•name ' Poock,' the landlord of the 'Hotel Doele,' is engraved. 
At the back, a maid-servant is coming in with a pasty, crowned 
■with a turkey. Most of the guests are listening to the captain. 
From an open window in the distance, facades of two houses 
are seen, surmounted by stone figures of sheep." 

There, now you know all about it : now you can go home 
and paint just such another. If you do, do pray remember to 
paint the hands of the figures as they are here depicted : they 
are as wonderful portraits as the faces. None of your slim 
Van Dyke elegancies, which have done duty at the cuffs of so 
'many doublets ; but each man with a hand for himself, as with 
-a face for himself. I blushed for the coarseness of one of the 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 163 

chiefs in this great company, that fellow behind "William the 
Drummer," splendidly attired, sitting full in the face of the 
public ; and holding a pork bone in his hand. Suppose the 
Saturday Review critic were to come suddenly on this picture ? 
Ah ! what a shock it would give that noble nature ! Why is 
that knuckle of pork not painted out ? at any rate, why is not 
a little fringe of lace painted round it ? or a cut pink paper ? or 
couldn't a smelling-bottle be painted instead, with a crest and 
a gold top, or a cambric pocket-handkerchief, in lieu of the 
horrid pig, with a pink coronet in the corner ? or suppose you 
covered the man's hand (which is very coarse and strong), and 
gave him the decency of a kid glove ? But a piece of pork 
in a naked hand ? O nerves and eau de Cologne, hide it, 
hide it! 

In spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, 
give me thy hand as nature made it ! A great, and famous, and 
noble handiwork I have seen here. Not the greatest picture 
in the world — not a work of the highest genius — but a perform- 
ance so great, various, and admirable, so shrewd of humor, 
so wise of observation, so honest and complete of expression, 
that to have seen it has been a delight, and to remember it 
will be a pleasure for days to come. Well done, Bartholomeus 
Vander Heist ! Brave, meritorious, victorious, happy Barthol- 
omew, to whom it has been given to produce a masterpiece ! 

May I take off my hat and pay a respectful compliment to 
Jan Steen, Esq. ? He is a glorious composer. His humor is 
as frank as Fielding's. Look at his own figure sitting in 
the window-sill yonder, and roaring with laughter! What a 
twinkle in the eyes ! what a mouth it is for a song, or a joke, 
or a noggin ! I think the composition in some of Jan's pictures 
amounts to the sublime, and look at them with the same delight 
and admiration which I h-\ 'e felt before works of the very 
highest style. This gallery is admirable — and the city in which 
the gallery is, is perhaps even more wonderful and curious to 
behold than the gallery. 

The first landing at Calais (or, I suppose, on any foreign 
shore) — the first sight of an Eastern city — the first view of 
Venice — and this of Amsterdam, are among the delightful 
shocks which I have had as a traveller. Amsterdam is as good 
as Venice, with a superadded humor and grotesqueness, which 
gives the sight-seer the most singular zest and pleasure. A run 
through Pekin I could hardly fancy to be more odd, strange, 
and yet familiar. This rush, and crowd, and prodigious vitality ; 
this immense swarm of life ; these busy waters, crowding barges, 



r64 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

swinging drawbridges, piled ancient gables, spacious markets 
teeming with people ; that ever-wonderful Jews' quarter ; that 
dear old world of painting and the past, yet alive, and throb- 
bing, and palpable — actual, and yet passing before you swiftly 
and strangely as a dream ! Of the many journeys of this Round- 
about life, that drive through Amsterdam is to be specially and 
gratefully remembered. You have never seen the palace of 
Amsterdam, my dear sir ? Why, there's a marble hall in that 
palace that will frighten you as much as any hall in Vathek, or 
a nightmare. At one end of that old, cold, glassy, glittering, 
ghostly, marble hall there stands a throne, on which a white 
marble king ought to sit with his white legs gleaming down 
into the white marble below, and his white eyes looking at 
a great white marble Atlas, who bears on his icy shoulders 
a blue globe as big as the full moon. If he were not a genie, 
and enchanted, and with a strength altogether hyperatlantean, 
he would drop the moon with a shriek on to the marble floor, and 
it would splitter into perdition. And the palace would rock 
and heave, and tumble ; and the waters would rise, rise, rise ; 
and the gables sink, sink, sink ; and the barges would rise up 
to the chimneys ; and the water-souchee fishes would flap over 
the Boompjes, where the pigeons and the storks used to perch ; 
and the Amster, and the Rotter, and the Saar, and the Op, 
and all the dams of Holland would burst, and the Zuyder Zee 
roll over the dykes ; and you would wake out of your dream, 
and find yourself sitting in your arm-chair. 

Was it a dream .? it seems like one. Have we been to 
Holland ? have we heard the chimes at midnight at Antwerp ? 
Were we really away for a week, or have I been sitting up in 
the room dozing, before this stale old desk "i Here's the desk ; 
yes. But, if it has been a dream, how could I have learned to 
hum that tune out of Dinorah ? Ah, is it that tune, or myself 
that I am humming > If it was a dream, how comes this yellow 
Notice des Tableaux du Musee d'Amsterdam avec fac- 
simile DES Monogrammes before me. and this signature of 
the gallant. 

Yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday ; it lasted a 
whole week. With the exception of that little pint of aftiari 
aliguid aX Rotterdam, we were all very happy. We might have 



NIL NISI BONUM. 165 

gone on being happy for whoever knows how many days more ; 
a week more, ten days more : who knows how long that dear 
teetotum happiness can be made to spin without toppling over ? 

But one of the party had desired letters to be sent poste 
restante, Amsterdam. The post-office is hard by that awful 
palace where the Atlas is, and which we really saw. 

There was only one letter, you see. Only one chance of 
finding us. There it was. " The post has only this moment 
come in," says the smirking commissioner. And he hands over 
the paper, thinking he has done something clever. 

Before the letter had been opened, I could read Come back, 
as clearly as if it had been painted on the wall. It was all 
over. The spell was broken. The sprightly little holiday fairy 
that had frisked and gambolled so kindly beside us for eight 
days of sunshine — or rain which was as cheerful as sunshine — 
gave a parting piteous look, and whisked away and vanished. 
And yonder scuds the postman, and here is the old desk 



NIL NISI BONUM. 



Almost the last words which Sir Walter spoke "^o Lockhart, 
his biographer, were, " Be a good man, my dear ! " and with 
the last flicker of breath on his dying lips, he sighed a farewell 
to his family, and passed away blessing them. 

Two men, famous, admired, beloved, have just left us, the 
Goldsmith and the Gibbon of our time.* Ere a few weeks are 
over, many a critic's pen will be at work, reviewing their lives, 
and passing judgment on their works. This is no review, or 
history, or criticism : only a word in testimony of respect and 
regard from a man of letters, who owes to his own professional 
labor the honor of becoming acquainted with these two eminent 
literary men. One was the first ambassador whom the New 
World of Letters sent to the Old. He was born almost with 
the republic ; the pater pairice had laid his hand on the child's 
head. He bore Washington's name : he came amongst us 
bringing the kindest sympathy, the most artless, sm.iling good- 
will. His new country (which some people here might be dis- 
posed to regard rather superciliously) could send us, as he 
showed in his own person, a gentleman, who, though himself 
born in no very high sphere, was most finished, polished, easy, 

• Washington Irving died, November 28, 1859 ; Lord Macaulay died, December 28, 
1859 



l66 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

witty, quiet ; and, socially, the equal of the most refined Euro- 
peans. If Irving's welcome in England was a kind one, was it 
not also gratefully remembered ? If he ate our salt, did he not 
pay us with a thankful heart ? Who can calculate the amount 
of friendliness and good feeling for our country which this 
writer's generous and untiring regard for us disseminated in 
his own ? His books are read by millions * of his countrymen, 
whom he has taught to love England, and why to love her. It 
would have been easy to speak otherwise than he did : to 
inflame national rancors, which, at the time when he first be- 
came known as a public writer, war had just renewed : to cry 
down the old civilization at the expense of the new : to point 
out our faults, arrogance, shortcomings, and give the republic 
to infer how much she was the parent state's superior. There 
are writers enough in the United States, honest and otherwise, 
who preach that kind of doctrine. But the good Irving, the 
peaceful, the friendly, had no place for bitterness in his heart, 
and no scheme but kindness. Received in England with ex- 
traordinary tenderness and friendship (Scott, Southey, Byron, 
a hundred others have borne witness to their liking for him), 
he was a messenger of good-will and peace between his country 
and ours. " See, friends ! " he seems to say, " these English 
are not so wicked, rapacious, callous, proud, as you have been 
taught to believe them. I went amongst them a humble man ; 
won my way by my pen ; and, when known, found every hand 
held out to me witli kindliness and welcome. Scott is a great 
man, you acknowledge. Did not Scott's King of England give 
a gold medal to him, and another to me, your countryman, and 
a stranger t " 

Tradition in the United States still fondly retains the his- 
tory of the feasts and rejoicings which awaited Irving on his 
return to his native country from Europe. He had a national 
welcome ; he stammered in his speeches, hid himself in con- 
fusion, and the people loved him all the better. He had 
worthily represented America in Europe. In that young com- 
munity a man who brings home with him abundant European 
testimonials is still treated with respect (I have found American 
writers, of wide-world reputation, strangely solicitous about the 
opinions of quite obscure British critics, and elated or depressed 
by their judgments) ; and Irving went home medalled by the 
King, diplomatized by the University, crowned and honored 
and admired. He had not in any way intrigued for his honors, 

* See his Life in the most remarkable Dictionary of Authors, published lately at Phi^ 
adelphia, by Mr. Alibone. 



NIL NISI BO NUM. 167 

he had fairly won them ; and, in living's instance, as in others, 
the old country was glad and eager to pay them. 

In America the love and regard for Irving was a national 
sentiment. Party wars are perpetually raging there, and are 
carried on by the press with a rancor and fierceness against 
individuals which exceed British, almost Irish, virulence. It 
seem^ed to me, during a year's travel in the country, as if no 
one ever aimed a blow at Irving. All men held their hand from 
that harmless, friendly peacemaker. I had the good fortune to 
see him at New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washing- 
ton,* and remarked how in every place he was honored and 
welcome. Every large city has its " Irving House." The 
country takes pride in the fame of its men of letters. The gate 
of his own charming little domain on the beautiful Hudson 
River was forever swinging before visitors who came to him. 
He shut out no one.f I had seen many pictures of his house, 
and read descriptions of it, in both of which it was treated with 
a not unusual American exaggeration. It was but a pretty 
little cabin of a place ; the gentleman of the press who took 
notes of the place, whilst his kind old host was sleeping, might 
have visited the whole house in a couple of minutes. 

And how came it that this house was so small, when Mr. 
Irving's books were sold by hundreds of thousands, nay, mil- 
lions, when his profits were known to be large, and the habits 
of life of the good old bachelor were notoriously modest and 
simple ? He had loved once in his life. The lady he loved 
died ; and he, whom all the world loved, never sought to re- 
place her. I can't say how much the thought of that fidelity 
has touched me. Does not the very cheerfulness of his after 
life add to the pathos of that untold story ? To grieve always 
was not in his nature ; or, when he had his sorrow, to bring all 
the world in to condole with him and bemoan it. Deep and 
quiet he lays the love of his heart, and buries it ; and grass 
and flowers grow over the sacred ground in due time. 

Irving had such a small house and such narrow rooms, be- 

* At Washington, Mr. Irving came to a lecture given by the writer, which Mr- Filmore 
and General Pierce, the President and President Elect, were also kind enough to attend 
together. " Two Kings of Brentford smelling at one rose," says Irving, looking up with 
his gonc'-lunnored smile. 

t Mr. Irving described tome with that humor and good-humor which he always kept, 
how, amongst other visitors, a member of the British press who had carried his distinguished 
pen to America (where he employed it in vilifying his own country) came to Sunnyside, 
introduced himse.f to Irving, partook of his wine and luncheon, and in two days described 
Mr. Irving, his house, his nieces, his meal, and his manner of dozing afterwards, in a New 
York paper. On another occasion, Irving said, laughing, " Two persons came to me, and 
one held me in conversation whilst the other miscreant took my portrait! " 



1 68 RO UND ABOUT PAPERS. 

cause there was a great number of people to occupy them. He 
could only afford to keep one old horse (Which, lazy and aged 
as it was, managed once or twice to run away with that careless 
old horseman). He could only afford to give plain sherry to 
that amiable British paragraph-monger from New York, who 
saw the patriarch asleep over his modest, blameless cup, and 
fetched the public into his private chamber to look at him. 
Irving could only live very modestly, because the wifeless, 
childless man had a number of children to whom he was as a 
father. He had as many as nine nieces, I am told — I saw two 
of these ladies at his house — with all of whom the dear old 
man had shared the produce of his labor and genius. 

" Be a good fnan, my dear." One can't but think of these 
last words of the veteran Chief of Letters, who had tasted and 
tested the value of worldly success, admiration, prosperity. 
Was Irving not good, and, of his works, was not his life the 
best part .'' In his family, gentle, generous, good-humored, af- 
fectionate, self-denying : in society, a delightful example of 
complete gentlemanhood ; quite unspoiled by prosperity ; never 
obsequious to the great (or, worse still, to the base and 
mean, as some public men are forced to be in his and other 
countries) ; eager to acknowledge every contemporary's merit ; 
always kind and affable to the young members of his calling ; 
in his professional bargains and mercantile dealings delicately 
honest and grateful ; one of the most charming masters of our 
lighter language ; the constant friend to us and our nation; to 
men of letters doubly dear, not for his wit and genius merely, 
but as an examplar of goodness, probity, and pure life : — I don't 
know what sort of testimonial will be raised to him in his own 
country, where generous and enthusiastic acknowledgment of 
American merit is never wanting : but Irving was in our ser- 
vice as well as theirs ; and as they have placed a stone at 
Greenwich yonder in memory of that gallant young Bellot, who 
shared the perils and fate of some of our Arctic seamen, I 
would like to hear of some memorial raised by English writers 
and friends of letters in affectionate remembrance of the dear 
and good Washington Irving. 

As for the other writer, whose departure many friends, some 
few most dearly-loved relatives, and multitudes of admiring 
readers deplore, our republic has already decreed his statue, 
and he must have known that he had earned this posthumous 
honor. He is not a poet and a man of letters merely, but 
citizen, statesman, a great British worthy. Almost from the first 
moment when he appears, amongst boys, amongst college stu- 



NIL NISI BO NUM. 169 

dents, amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank as a great 
Englishman, All sorts of success are easy to him : as a lad 
he goes down into the arena with others, and wins all the prizes 
to which he has a mind. A place in the senate is straightway 
offered to the young man. He takes his seat there ; he speaks, 
when so minded, without party anger or intrigue, but not with- 
out party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause. 
Still he is a poet and philosopher even more than orator 
That he may have leisure and means to pursue his darling 
studies, he alDsents himself for a while, and accepts a richly-re- 
munerative post in the East. As learned a man may live in a 
cottage or a college common-room ; but it always seemed to 
me that ample means and recognized rank were Macaulay's 
as of right. Years ago there was a wretched outcry raised be- 
cause Mr. Macaulay dated a letter from Windsor Castle, where 
he was staying. Immortal gods ! Was this man not a fit guest 
for any palace in the world .'' or a fit companion for any man or 
woman in it ? I dare say, after Austerlitz, the old K. K. court 
officials and footmen sneered at Napoleon for dating from 
Schonbrunn. But that miserable " Windsor Castle " outcry is 
an echo out of fast-retreating old-world remembrances. The 
place of such a natural chief was amongst the first of the land ; 
and that country is best, according to our British notion at 
least, where the man of eminence has the best chance of in- 
vestigating his genius and intellect. 

If a company of giants were got together, very likely one or 
two of the mere six-feet-si.x; people might be angry at the incon- 
testable superiority of the very tallest of the party : and so I 
have heard some London wits, rather peevish at Macaulay's 
superiority, complain that he occupied too much of the talk, and 
so forth. Now that that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, 
will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance 
to listen ! To remember the talk is to wonder : to think not 
only of the treasures he had in his memory, but of the trifles 
he had stored there, and could produce with equal readiness. 
Almost on the last day I had the fortune to see him, a conver- 
sation happened suddenly to spring up about senior wranglers, 
and what they had done in after life. To the almost terror of 
the persons present, Macaulay began with the senior wrangler 
of 1801-2-3-4, and so on, giving the name of each, and rela- 
ting his subsequent career and rise. Everyman who has known 
him has his story regarding that astonishing m.emory. It may 
be that he was not ill-pleased that you should recognize it ; but 
to those prodigious intellectual feats, which were so easy to 



lyo 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



him, who would grudge his tribute to homage ? His talk was, 
in a word, admirable, and we admired it. 

Of the notices which have appeared regarding Lord Ma- 
caulay, up to the day when the present lines were written (the 
9th January), the reader should not deny himself the pleasure of 
looking especially at two. It is a good sign of the times when 
such articles as these (I mean the articles in The T'mies and 
Saturday Review^ appear in our public prints about our public 
men. They educate us, as it were, to admire rightly. An un- 
instructed person in a museum or at a concert may pass by 
without recognizing a picture or a passage of music, which the 
connoisseur by his side may show him is a masterpiece of har- 
n ony, or a wonder of artistic skill. After reading these pa- 
pers you like and respect more the person you have admired 
so much already. And so with regard to Macaulay's style 
there may be faults of course — what critic can't point them out ? 
But for the nonce we are not talking about faults : we want to say 
nil nisi bonuvi. Well — take at hazard any three pages of the 
" Essays " or " History ; " — and, glimmering below the stream 
of the narrative, as it were, you, an average reader, see one, two, 
three, a half-score of allusions to other historic facts, characters, 
literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Why is this 
epithet used ? Whence is that simile drawn ? How does he 
manage in two or three words, to paint an individual, or to in- 
dicate a landscape ? Your neighbor, who has his reading, and 
his little stock of literature stowed away in his mind, shall de- 
tect more points, allusions', happy touches, indicating not only 
the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but 
the wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of this 
great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he 
travels a hundred miles to make a line cf description. 

Many Londoners — not all — have seen the British Museum 
Library. I speak d cxiir ouveri, and pray the kindly reader to 
bear with me. I have seen all sorts of domes of Peters and 
Pauls, Sophia, Pantheon, — what not? — and have been struck by 
none of them so much as by that catholic dome in Bloomsbury, 
under which our million volumes are housed. What peace, what 
love, what truth, what beauty, what happiness for all, what 
generous kindness for you and me, are here spread out ! It 
seems to me one cannot sit down in that place without a heart 
full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the 
table, and to have thanked heaven for this my English birth- 
right, freely to partake of these bountiful books, and to speak 
the truth I find there. Under the dome which held Macaulay's 



NIL NISI BONUM. 



171 



brain, and from which his solemn eyes lookea out on the world 
but a fortnight since, what a vast, brilliant, and wonderful store 
of learning was ranged ! what strange lore would he not fetch 
for you at your bidding ! A volume of law, or history, a book 
of poetry, familiar or forgotten (except by himself who forgot 
nothing), a novel ever so old, and he had it at hand. I spoke 
to him once about " Clarissa." " Not read ' Clarissa I ' " he 
cried out. " If you have once thoroughly entered on ' Clarissa ' 
and are infected by it, you can't leave it. When I was in India 
I passed one hot season at the-hills, and there were the Govern^ 
or-General, and the Secretary of Government, and the Com- 
mander-in-Chief, and their wives. I had ' Clarissa ' with me : 
and, as soon as they began to read, the whole station was in a 
passion of excitement about Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, 
and her scoundrelly Lovelace ! The Governor's wife seized 
the book, and the Secretary waited for it, and the Chief Justice 
could not read it for tears ! " He acted the whole scene : he 
paced up and down the " Athenaeum " library : I dare say he 
could have spoken pages of the book — of that book, and of 
what countless piles of others ! 

In this little paper let us keep to the text of nil nisi honum. 
One paper I have read regarding Lord Macaulay says " he had 
no heart." Why, a man's books may not always speak the 
truth, but they speak his mind in spite of himself : and it seems 
to me this man's heart is beating through every page he penned. 
He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation against 
wrong, craft, tyranny. How he che'ers heroic resistance ; how 
he backs and applauds freedom struggling for its own ; how he 
hates scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful ; how he 
recognizes genius, though selfish villains possess it ! The critic 
who says Macaulay had no heart, might say that Johnson had 
none : and two men more generous, and more loving, and more 
hating, and more partial, and more noble, do not live in our 
history. Those who knew Lord Macaulay knew how admirably 
tender and generous,* and affectionate he was. It was not his 
business to bring his family before the theatre footlights, and 
call for bouquets from the gallery as he wept over them. 

If any young man of letters reads this little sermon — and to 
him, indeed, it is addressed — I would say to him, "Bear Scott's 
words in your mind, and ''be good, fny dear.'" Here are two 
literary men gone to their account, and laus Deo, as far as wa 

* Since the above was written, I have been informed that it has been found, on examin- 
ing Lord Macaulay's papers, that he was in the habit of giving away more Hum a fourth 
^ri of his annual income. 



172 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



know, it is fair, and open, and clean. Here Is no need of 

apologies for shortcomings, or explanations of vices which 
would have been virtuous but for unavoidable, &c. Here are 
two examples of men most differently gifted : each pursuing his 
calling; each speaking his truth as God bade him ; each honest 
in his life ; just and irreproachable in his dealings ; dear to his 
friends ; honored by his country ; beloved at his fireside. It 
has been the fortunate lot of both to give incalculable happiness 
and delight to the world, which thanks them in return with an 
immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be our 
chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or 
rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are 
rewards paid to our service. We may not win the buton or 
epaulettes ; but God give us strength to guard the honor of 
the flas ! 



ON HALF A LOAF. 



A LETTER TO MESSRS. BROADWAY, BATTERY AND CO., OF NEW 

YORK, BANKERS. 

Is it all over ? May we lock up the case of instruments ? 
Have we signed our wills ; settled up our affairs ; pretended to 
talk and rattle quite cheerfully to the women at dinner, so that 
they should not be alarmed ; sneaked away under some pretext, 
and looked at the children sleeping in their beds with their little 
unconscious thumbs in their mouths, and a flush on the soft- 
pillowed cheek ; made every arrangement with Colonel Mac- 
Turk, who acts as our second, and knows the other principal a 
great deal too well to think he will ever give in ; invented a 
monstrous figment about going to shoot pheasants with Mac in 
the morning, so as to soothe the anxious fears of the dear mis- 
tress of the house ; early as the hour appointed for the — the 
little affair — was, have we been awake hours and hours sooner ; 
risen before daylight, with a faint hope, perhaps, that MacTurk 
might have come to some arrangement with the other side ; at 
seven o'clock (confound his punctuality !) heard his cab-wheel 
at the door, and let him in looking perfectly trim, fresh, jolly, 
and well shaved ; driven off with him in the cold morning, after 
a very unsatisfactory breakfast of coffee and stale bread-and- 



ON HALF A LOAF. 



173 



butter (which choke, somehow, in the swallowing) ; driven off 
to Wormwood Scrubs in the cold, muddy, misty, moonshiny 
morning; stepped out of the cab, where Mac has bid the man 
to halt on a retired spot in the common ; in one minute more, 
seen another cab arrive, from which descend two gentlemen, 
one of whom has a case like MacTurk's under his arm ; — looked 
round and round the solitude, and seen not one single sign of 
a policeman — no, no more than in a row in London ; — depre- 
cated the horrible necessity which drives civilized men to the 
use of powder and bullet ; — taken ground as firmly as may be, 
and looked on whilst Mac is neatly loading his weapons ; and 
when all ready, and one looked for the decisive One, Two, 
Three — have we even heard Captain O'Toole (the second of 
the other principal) walk up, and say : " Colonel MacTurk, I 
am desired by my principal to declare at this eleventh — this 
twelfth hour, that he is willing to own that he sees he has been 
WRONG in the dispute which has arisen between him and your 
friend ; that he apologizes for offensive expressions which he 
has used in the heat of the quarrel ; and regrets the course he 
has taken?" If something- like this has happened to you, 
however great your courage, you have been glad not to fight ; — 
however accurate your aim, you have been pleased not to fire. 
On the sixth day of January in this year sixty-two, what 
hundreds of thousands — I may say, what millions of English- 
men, were in the position of the personage here sketched — 
Christian men, I hope, shocked at the dreadful necessity of 
battle ; aware of the horrors which the conflict must produce, 
and yet feeling that the moment was come, and that there was 
no arbitrament left but that of steel and cannon ! My reader, 
perhaps, has been in America. If he has, he knows what good 
people are to be found there ; how polished, how generous, how 
gentle, how courteous. But it is not the voices of these you 
hear in the roar of hate, defiance, folly, falsehood, which comes 
to us across the Atlantic. You can't hear gentle voices ; very 
many who could speak are afraid. Men must go forward, or 
be crushed by the maddened crowd behind them. I suppose 
after the perpetration of that act of — what shall we call it.'' — of 
sudden war, which Wilkes did, and Everett approved, most of 
us believed that battle was inevitable. Who has not read the 
American papers for six weeks past? Did you ever think the 
United States Government would give up those Commissioners? 
I never did, for my part. It seems to me the United States 
Government have done the most courageous act of the war. 
Before that act was done, what an excitement prevailed in 



174 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



London ! In every Club there was a parliament sitting in 
permanence : in every domestic gathering this subject was sure 
to form a main part of the talk. Of course I have seen many 
people who have travelled in America, and heard them on this 
matter — friends of the South, friends of the North, friends of 
peace, and American stockholders in plenty. — "They will never 
give up the men, sir," that was the opinion on all sides ; and, if 
thev would not, we knew what was to happen. 

For weeks past this nightmare of war has been riding us. 
The City was already gloomy enough. When a great domestic 
grief and misfortune visits the chief person of the State, the 
heart of the people, too, is sad and awe-stricken. It might be 
this sorrow and trial were but presages of greater trials and 
sorrow to come. What if the sorrow of war is to be added to 
the other calamity? Such forebodings have formed the theme 
of many a man's talk, and darkened many a fireside. Then 
came the rapid orders for sliips to arm and troops to depart. 
How many of us have had to say farewell to friends whom 
duty called away with their regiments ; on whom we strove to 
look cheerfully, as we shook their hands, it might be for the 
last time ; and whom our thoughts depicted, treading the snows 
of the immense Canadian frontier, where their intrepid Httle 
band might have to face the assaults of other enemies than 
winter and rough weather! I went to a jDlay one night, ani 
protest I hardly know what was the entertainment which passed 
before my eyes. In the next stall was an American gentleman, 
who knew me. "Good heavens, sir," I thought, "is it decreed 
that you and I are to be authorized to murder each other next 
week ; that my people shall be bombarding your cities, destroy- 
ing your navies, making a hideous desolation of your coast ; 
that our peaceful frontiers shall be subject to fire, rapine, 
and murder.?" "They will never give up the men," said the 
Englishman. " They will never give up the men," said the 
American. And the Christmas piece which the actors were 
playing proceeded like a piece in a dream. To make the grand 
comic performance doubly comic, my neighbor presently in- 
formed me how one of the best friends I had in America — the 
most hospitable, kindly, amiable of men, from whom I had 
twice received the warmest welcome and the most delightful 
hospitality — was a prisoner in Fort Warren, on charges by 
which his life perhaps might be risked. I think that was the 
most dismal Christmas fun which these eyes ever looked on. 

Carry out that notion a little farther, and depict ten thou- 
sand, a hundred thousand homes in England saddened by the 



ON HAU- A LOAF. 



175 



thought of the comins: calamity, and oppressed by the pervad- 
ing gloom. My next-door neighbor perhaps has parted with 
her son. Now the ship in which he is, with a thousand brave 
comrades, is ploughing through the stormy midnight ocean. 
Presently (under the flag we know of) the thin red line in which 
her boy forms a speck, is winding its way through the vast 
Canadian snows. Another neighbor's boy is not gone, but is 
expecting orders to sail ; and some one else, besides the circle 
at home maybe, is in prayer and terror, thinking of the sum- 
mons which calls the young sailor away. By firesides modest 
and splendid, all over the three kingdoms, that sorrow is keep- 
ing; watch, and myriads of hearts beating with that thought, 
*' Will they give up the men ? " 

I don't know how, on the first day after the capture of the 
Southern Commissioners was announced, a rumor got abroad 
in London that the taking of the men was an act according to 
law, of which our nation could take no notice. It was said 
that the law authorities had so declared, and a very noble tes- 
timony to the loyalty of Englishmen, I think, v^^as shown by 
the instant submission of high-spirited gentlemen, most keenly 
feeling that the nation had been subject to a coarse outrage, 
who were silent when told that the law was with the aggressor. 
The relief which presently came, when, after a pause of a day, 
we found that law was on our side, was indescribable. The 
nation might then take notice of this insult to its honor. Never 
were people more eager than ours when they found they had a 
right to reparation. 

I have talked during the last week with many English 
holders of American securities, who, of course, have been 
aware of the threat held over them. " England," says the 
New York Herald, " cannot afford to go to war with us, for six 
hundred millions' worth of American stock is owned by British 
subjects, which, in event of hostilities, would be confiscated ; 
and we now call upon the Companies not to take it off their 
hands on any terms. Let its forfeiture be held over Efigland 
as a weapon in terrorem. British subjects have two or three 
hundred millions of dollars invested in shipping and other 
property in the United States. All this property, together with 
the stocks, would be seized, amounting to nine hundred millions 
of dollars. Will England incur this tremendous loss for a 
mere abstraction ? " 

Whether " a mere abstraction " here means the abstraction 
of the two Southern Commissioners from under our flag, or 
the abstract idea of injured honor, which seems ridiculous to 



I y 6 RO UND ABOUT PAPERS. 

the Herald^ it is needless to ask. I have spoken with many 
men who have money invested in the States, but I declare I 
have not met one English gentleman whom the publication of 
this threat has influenced for a moment. Our people have 
nine hundred millions of dollars invested in the United States, 
have they ? And the Herald " calls upon the Companies " not 
to take any of this debt off our hands. Let us, on our side, 
entreat the English press to give this announcement every 
publicity. Let us do everything in our power to make this 
*' call upon the Americans " well known in England. I hope 
English newspaper editors will print it, and print it again and 
again. It is not we who say this of American citizens, but 
American citizens who say this of themselves. " Bull is odious. 
We can't bear Bull. He is haughty, arrogant, a braggart, and 
a blusterer ; and we can't bear brag and bluster in our modest 
and decorous country. We hate Bull, and if he quarrels with 
us on a point in which we are in the wrong, we have goods of 
of his in our custody, and we will rob him ! " Suppose your 
London banker saying to you, " Sir, I have always thought your 
manners disgusting, and your arrogance insupportable. You 
dare to complain of my conduct because I have wrongfully 
imprisoned Jones. My answer to your vulgar interference is, 
that I confiscate your balance ! " 

What would be an English merchant's character after a few 
such transactions? It is not improbable that the moralists of 
the Herald would call him a rascal. Why have the United States 
been paying seven, eight, ten per cent, for money for years 
past, when the same commodity can be got elsewhere at half 
that rate of interest ? Why, because though among the richest 
proprietors in the world, creditors were not sure of them. So 
the States have had to pay eighty millions yearly for the use 
of money which would cost other borrowers but thirty. Add 
up this item of extra interest alone for a dozen years, and see 
what a prodigious penalty the States have been paying for 
repudiation here and there, for sharp practice, for doubtful 
credit. Suppose the peace is kept between us, the remem- 
brance of this last threat alone will cost the States millions 
and millions more. If they must have money, we must have a 
greater interest to insure our jeopardized capital. Do Ameri- 
can Companies want to borrow money — as want to borrow they 
will ? Mr. Brown, show the gentlemen that extract from the 
New York Herald, which declares that the United States will 
confiscate private property in the event of a war. As the 
country newspapers say, " Please, country papers, copy this 



ON HALF A LOAP. 



177 



paragraph," And, gentlemen in America, when the honor of 
your nation is called in question, please to remember that it is 
the American press which glories in announcing that you are 
prepared to be rogues. 

And when this war has drained uncounted hundreds of 
millions more out of the United States exchequer, will they 
be richer or more inclined to pay debts, or less willing to evade 
them, or more popular with their creditors, or more likely to 
get money from men whom they deliberately announce that 
they will cheat? I have not followed the. Herald on the "stone- 
ship " question — that great naval victory appears to me not 
less horrible and wicked than suicidal. Block the harbors for- 
ever ; destroy the inlets of the commerce of the world ; perish 
cities, — so that we may wreak an injury on them. It is the 
talk of madmen, but not the less wicked. The act injures the 
whole Republic ; but it is perpetrated. It is to deal harm to 
ages hence ; but it is done. The Indians of old used to burn 
women and their unborn children. The stone-ship business is 
Indian warfare. And it is performed by men who tell us every 
week that they are at the head of civilization, and that the Old 
World is decrepit, and cruel, and barbarous- as compared to 
theirs. 

The same politicians who throttle commerce at its neck, and 
threaten to confiscate trust-money, say that when the war is 
over, and the South is subdued, then the turn of the old 
country will come, and a direful retribution shall be taken for 
our conduct. This has been the cry all through the war. 
"We should have conquered the South," says an American 
paper which I read this very day, "but for England." Was 
there ever such puling heard from men who have an army of a 
million, and who turn and revile a people who have stood as 
aloof from their contest as we have from the war of Troy ? Or 
is it an outcry made with malice prepense ? And is the song of 
the N'l'7u York Times a variation of the Herald tune 1 — " The 
conduct of the British, in folding their arms and taking no part 
in the fight, has been so base that it has caused the prolongation 
of the war, and occasioned a prodigious expense on our part. 
Therefore, as we have British property in our hands, we, &c., 
&c." The, lamb troubled the water dreadfully, and the wolf, in 
a righteous indignation, " confiscated " him. Of course we have 
heard that at an undisturbed time Great Britain would never 
have dared to press its claim for redress. Did the United 
States wait until we were at peace with France before they went 
to war with us last ? Did Mr. Seward yield the claim which he 

12 



1 78 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

confesses to be just, until he himself was menaced with war? 
How long were the Southern gentlemen kept in prison ? What 
caused them to be set free ? and did the Cabinet of Washington 
see its error before or after the demand for redress ? * The 
captor was feasted at Boston, and the captives in prison hard 
by. If the wrong-doer was to be punished, it was Captain Wilkes 
who ought to have gone into limbo. At any rate, as " the Cab- 
inet of Washington could not give its approbation to the com- 
mander of the ' San Jacinto,' " why were the men not sooner 
set free } To sit at the Tremont House, and hear the captain 
after dinner give his opinion on international law, would have 
been better sport for the prisoners than the grim salle-a-manger 
at Fort Warren. 

I read in the commercial news brought by the " Teutonia," 
and published ni London on the present 13th January, that the 
pork market was generally quiet on the 29th December last ; 
that lard, though with more activity, was heavy and decidedly 
lower ; and at Philadelphia, whiskey is steady and stocks firm. 
Stocks are firm : that is a comfort for the English holders, 
and the confiscating process recommended by the Herald is 
at least deferred. But presently comes an announcement which 
is not quite so cheering : — " The Saginaw Central Railway 
Company (let us call it) has postponed its January dividend 
on account of the disturbed condition of public affairs." 

A la bonne heure. The bond and shareholders of the 
Saginaw must look for loss and depression in times of war. 
This is one of war's dreadful taxes and necessities ; and all 
sorts of innocent people must sufifer by the misfortune. The 
com was high at Waterloo when a hundred and fifty thousand 
men came and trampled it down on a Sabbath morning. There 
was no help for that calamity, and the Belgian farmers lost their 
crops for the year. Perhaps I am a farmer myself — an inno- 
cent colomis ; and instead of being able to get to church with 
my family, have to see squadrons of French dragoons thunder- 
ing upon my barley, and squares of English infantry forming 

• " At the beginning of December the British fleet on the West Indian station mounted 
850 guns, and comprised five liners, ten first-class frigates, and seventeen powerful corvettes. 
• • * In little more than a month the fleet available for operations on the American shore 
had been more than doubled. The reinforcements prepared at the various dockyards in- 
cluded two line-of-battle ships, twenty-nine magnificent frieates — such as tlTe ' Shannon,' the 
' Sutlej,' the ' Euryalus,' the ' Orlando,' the ' Galatea ; ' eight corvettes, armed like the 
.frigates in part, with loo and ^o-pounder Armstrong guns ; and the two tremendous iron- 
cased ships, the 'Warrior' and the 'Black Prince ;' and their smaller sisters the ' Resist- 
ance' and the ' Defence.' There was work to be done which might have delayed the com- 
mission of a few of these ships for some weeks longer ; but if the United States had chosen 
' war instead of peace, the blockade of their coasts would have been supported by a steam fleet 
vof more than sixty splendid ships, armed with 1,800 guns, many of them of the heaviest and 
most efiEective kind." — Saturday Review: Jan. 11. 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 179 

and trampling all over my oats. (By the way, in writing of 
" Panics," an ingenious writer in the Atlantic Magazine says 
that the British panics at Waterloo were frequent and notorious). 
Well, I am a Belgian peasant, and I see the British running 
away and the French cutting the fugitives down. What have I 
done that these men should be kicking down my peaceful har- 
vest for me, on which I counted to pay my rent, to feed my 
horses, my household, my children ? It is hard. But it is the 
fortune of war. But suppose the battle over ; the Frenchman 
says, "You scoundrel ! why did you not take a part with me ? 
and why did you stand like a double-faced traitor looking on ? 
I should have won the battle but for you. And I hereby con- 
fiscate the farm you stand on, and you and your family may go 
to the workhouse." 

The New York press holds this argument over English 
people in terrorem. " We Americans may be ever so wrong in 
the matter in dispute, but if you push us to a war, we will 
confiscate your English property." Very good. It is peace 
now. Confidence of course is restored between us. Our 
eighteen hundred peace commissioners have no occasion to 
open their mouths ; and the little question of confiscation is 
postponed. Messrs. Battery, Broadway and Co., of New York, 
have the kindness to sell my Saginaws for what they will 
fetch. I shall lose half my loaf very likely ; but for the sake of 
a quiet life, let us give up a certain quantity of farinaceous 
food ; and half a loaf, you know, is better than no bread at all. 



* THE NOTCH ON THE AXE.— A STORY A LA 
MODE. 

Part I. 

Every one remembers in the Fourth Book of the immortal 
poem of your Blind Bard, (to whose sightless orbs no doubt 
Glorious Shapes were apparent, and Visions Celestial,) how 
Adam discourses to Eve of the Bright Visitors who hovered 
round their Eden — 

* Millions of spiritual creatore* walk the earth, 
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.' 

" ' How often,' says Father Adam, * from the steep of echo- 
ing hill or thicket, have we heard celestial voices to the midnight 



l8o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

air, sole, or responsive to each other's notes, singing ! ' After 
the Act of Disobedience, when the erring pair from Eden took 
their solitary way, and went forth to toil and trouble on common 
earth — though the Glorious Ones no longer were visible, you 
cannot say they were gone. It was not that the Bright Ones 
were absent, but that the dim eyes of rebel man no longer 
could see them. In your chamber hangs a picture of one whom 
you never knew, but whom you have long held in tenderest 
regard, and who was painted for you by a friend of mine, the 
Knight of Plympton. She communes with you. She smiles on 
you. When your spirits are low, her bright eyes shine on you 
and cheer you. Her innocent sweet smile is a caress to you. 
She never fails to soothe you with her speechless prattle. You 
love her. She is alive with you. As you extinguish your candle 
and turn to sleep, though your eyes see her not, is she not there 
still smiling .■• As you lie in the night awake, and thinking of 
your duties, and the morrow's inevitable toil oppressing the 
busy, weary, wakeful brain as with a remorse, the crackling fire 
flashes up for a moment in the grate, and she is there, your 
little Beauteous Maiden, smiling with her sweet eyes ! When 
moon is down, when fire is out, when curtains are drawn, when 
lids are closed, is she not there, the little Beautiful One, though 
invisible, present and smiling still ? Friend, the Unseen 
Ones are round about us. Does it not seem as if the time were 
drawing near when it shall be given to men to behold them ? " 

The print of which my friend spoke, and which, indeed, 
hangs in my room, though he has never been there, is that 
charming little winter piece of Sir Joshua, representing the 
little Lady Caroline Montague, afterwards Duchess of Buc- 
cleuch. She is represented as standing in the midst of a winter 
landscape, wrapped in muff and cloak ; and she looks out of 
her picture with a smile so exquisite that a Herod could not 
see her without being charmed. 

" I beg your pardon, Mr. Pinto," I said to the person with 
whom I was conversing. (I wonder, by the way, that I was 
not surprised at his knowing how fond I am of this print.) 
"You spoke of the Knight of Plympton. Sir Joshua died, 
1792 : and you say he was your dear friend ? " 

As I spoke I chanced to look at Mr. Pinto ; and then it 
suddenly struck me : Gracious powers ! Perhaps you are a 
hundred years old, now I think of it. You look more than a 
hundred. Yes, you may be a thousand years old for what I 
know. Your teeth are false. One eye is evidently false. Can 
I say that the other is not ? If a man's age may be calculated 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. i8i 

by the rings round his eyes, this man may be as old as Methu- 
saleh. He has no beard. He wears a large curly glossy brown 
wig, and his eyebrows are painted a deep olive-green. It was 
odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, 
in these queer old chambers in Shepherd's Inn. 

Pinto passed a yellow bandanna handkerchief over his awful 
white teeth, and kept his glass eye steadily fixed on me. " Sir 
Joshua's friend ? " said he (you perceive, eluding my direct 
question). " Is not every one that knows his pictures Rey- 
nolds's friend ? Suppose I tell you that I have been in his 
painting room scores of times, and that his sister The has 
made me tea, and his sister Toffy has made coffee for me ? 
You will only say I am an old ombog." (Mr. Pinto, I re- 
marked, spoke all languages with an accent equally foreign.) 
"Suppose I tell you that I knew Mr. Sam Johnson, and did not 
like him ? that I was at that very ball at Madame Cornells', 
which you have mentioned in one of your little — what do you 
call them ? — bah ! my memory begins to fail me — in one of 
your little Whirligig Papers ? Suppose I tell you that Sir 
Joshua has been here, in this very room ? " 

*' Have you, then, had these apartments for — more — than 
—seventy years .'' " I asked. 

" They look as if they had not been swept for that time — 
don't they ? Hey ? I did not say that I had them for seventy 
years, but that Sir Joshua has visited me here." 

" When } " 1 asked, eyeing the man sternly, for I began to 
think he was an impostor. 

He answered me with a glance still more stern : " Sir 
Joshua Reynolds was here this very morning, with Angelica 
Kaufmann and Mr. Oliver Goldschmidt. He is still very much 
attached to Angelica, who still does not care for him. Because 
he is dead (and I was in the fourth mourning coach at his fu- 
neral), is that any reason why he should not come back to earth 
again ? My good sir, you are laughing at me. He has sat 
many a time on that very chair which you are occupying. 
There are several spirits in the room now, whom you cannot 
see. Excuse me." Here he turned round as if he were ad- 
dressing somebody, and began rapidly speaking a language un- 
known to me. " It is Arabic," he said ; " a bad patois I own. 
I learned it in Barbary, when I was a prisoner amongst the 
Moors. In anno 1609, bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen. Ha ! 
you doubt me : look at me well. At least I am like " 

Perhaps some of my readers remember a paper of which 
the figure of a man carrying a barrel formed the initial letter, 



l82 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

and which I copied from an old spoon now in my possession. 
As I looked at Mr. Pinto I do declare he looked so like the 
figure on that old piece of plate that I started and felt very 
uneasy, " Ha ! " said he, laughing through his false teeth (I 
declare they were false — I could see utterly toothless gums 
working up and down behind the pink coral), " you see I wore 
a beard den ; I am shafednow ; perhaps youtink I am a spoon. 
Ha, ha ! " And as he laughed he gave a cough which I 
thought would have coughed his teeth out, his glass eye out, 
his wig off, his very head off ; but he stopped this convulsion 
by stumping across the room and seizing a little bottle of bright 
pink medicine, which, being opened, spread a singular acrid 
aromatic odor through the apartment ; and I thought I saw — 
but of this I cannot take an affirmation — a light green and vio- 
let flame flickering round the neck of the phial as he opened it. 
By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise which he made in 
crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once that my 
strange entertainer had a wooden leg. Over the dust which 
lay quite thick on the boards, you could see the mark of one 
foot very neat and pretty, and then a round O, which was nat- 
urally the impression made by the wooden stump. I own I 
had a queer thrill as I saw that mark, and felt a secret comfort 
that it was not cloven. 

In this desolate apartment in which Mr. Pinto had invited me 
to see him, there were three chairs, one bottomless, a little 
table on which you might put a breakfast-tray, and not a single 
other article of furniture. In the next room, the door of which 
was open, I could see a magnificent gilt dressing-case, with 
some splendid diamond and ruby shirt-studs lying by it, and a 
chest of drawers, and a cupboard apparently full of clothes. 

Remembering him in Baden Baden in great magnificence, I 
wondered at his present denuded state. " You have a house 
elsewhere, Mr. Pinto } " I said. 

" Many," says he. " I have apartments in many cities. I 
lock dem up, and do not carry mosh logish.'" 

I then remembered that his apartment at Baden, where I 
first met him, was bare, and had no bed in it. 

" There is, then, a sleeping-room beyond ? " 

"This is the sleeping-room." (He pronounced it dts. Can 
this, by the way, give any clue to the nationality of this singular 
man ?) 

" If you sleep on these two old chairs you have a rickety 
couch ; if on the floor, a dusty one." 

*' Suppose I sleep up dere ,'' " said this strange man, and he 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 183 

actually pointed up to the ceiling. I thought him mad, or what 
he himself called " an ombog." " I know. You do not believe 
me ; for why should I deceive you .-' I came but to propose a 
matter of business to you, I told you I could give you the 
clue to the mystery of the Two Children in Black, whom you 
met at Baden, and you came to see me. If I told you you 
would not believe me. What for try and convinz you ? Ha 
hey? " And he shook his head once, twice, thrice, at me, and 
glared at me out of his eyes in a peculiar way. 

Of what happened now I protest I cannot give an accurate 
account. It seemed to me that there shot a flame from his 
eye into my brain, whilst behind his glass eye there was a 
green illumination as if a candle had been lit in it. It seemed 
to me that from his long fingers two quivering flames issued, 
sputtering, as it were, which penetrated me, and forced me 
back into one of the chairs — the broken one — out of which I 
had much difficulty in scrambling, when the strange glamor 
was ended. It seemed to me that, when I was so fixed, so 
transfixed in the broken chair, the man floated up to the ceil- 
ing, crossed his legs, folded his arms as if he were lying on a 
sofa, and grinned down at me. When I came to myself he was 
down from the ceiling, and, taking me out of the broken cane- 
bottomed chair, kindly enough — ''Bah," said he, "it is the 
smell of my medicine. It often gives the vertigo. I thought 
you would have had a little fit. Come into the open air." 
And we went down the steps, and into Shepherd's Inn, where 
the setting sun was just shining on the statue of Shepherd ; 
the laundresses were trapesing about ; the porters were lean- 
ing against the railings ; and the clerks were playing at marbles 
to my inexpressible consolation. 

" You said you were going to dine at the ' Gray's-inn Coffee- 
house,' " he said. I was. I often dined there. There is ex- 
cellent wine at the " Gray's-inn Coffee-house ; " but I declare I 
NEVER SAID SO. I was not astonished at his remark ; no more 
astonished than if I was in a dream. Perhaps I was in a 
dream. Is life a dream ? Are dreams facts ? Is sleeping 
being really awake } I don't know. I tell you I am puzzled. 
I have read the "Woman in White," "The Strange Story" 
— not to mention that story " Stranger than Fiction " in the 
Cornhill Magazitie — that story for which three credible wit- 
nesses are ready to vouch. I have had messages from the 
dead, and not only from the dead, but from people who never 
existed at all. I own I am in a state of much bewilderment : 
but, if you please, will proceed with my simple, my artless story. 



x84 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Well, then. We passed from Shepherd's Inn into Holborn, 
and looked for a while at Woodgate's bric-a-brac shop, which 
I never could pass without delaying at the windows — indeed, 
if I were going to be hung, I would beg the cart to stop, and 
let me have one look more at that delightful omnium gatherum. 
And passing Woodgate's, we come to Gale's little shop, " No. 
47," which is also a favorite haunt of mine. 

Mr. Gale happened to be at his door, and as we exchanged 
salutations, " Mr. Pinto," I said, " will you like to see a real 
curiosity in this curiosity-shop ? Step into Mr. Gale's little 
back room." 

In that little back parlor there are Chinese gongs ; there 
are old Saxe and Sevres plates ; there is Fiirstenberg, Carl 
Theodor, Worcester, Amstel, Nankin, and other jincrockery. 
And in the corner what do you think there is .'' There is an 
actual GUILLOTINE. If you doubt me, go and see — Gale, 
High Holborn, No. 47. It is a slim instrument, much lighter 
than those which they make now ; some nine feet high, nar- 
row, a pretty piece of upholstery enough. There is the hook 
over which the rope used to play which unloosened the dread- 
ful axe above ; and look ! dropped into the orifice where the 
head used to go — there is the axe itself, all rusty, with a 

GREAT NOTCH IN THE BLADE. 

As Pinto looked at it — Mr. Gale was not in the room, I 
recollect ; happening to have been just called out by a customer 
who offered him three pounds fourteen and sixpence for a blue 
Shepherd in pate tendre, — Mr. Pinto gave a little start, and 
seemed mjr// for a moment. Then he looked steadily towards 
one of those great porcelain stools which you see in gardens — 
and — it seemed to me — I tell you I won't take my affidavit — 
I may have been maddened by the six glasses I took of that 
pink elixir — I may have been sleep-walking : perhaps I am as 
I write now— I may have been under the influence of that as- 
tounding MEDIUM into whose hands I had fallen — but I vow 
I heard Pinto say, with rather a gastly grin at the porcelain 
stool, 



" Nay, nefer shague your gory 
Dou canst not say I did it. 



locks at me, 



(He pronounced it, by the way, I dit it, by which I know that 
Pinto was a German.) 

I heard Pinto say those very words, and sitting on the 
porcelain stool I saw, dimly at first, then with an awful distinct- 
ness — a ghost — an eidolon — a form — ^A headless man seated, 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 185 

with his head in his lap, which wore an expression of piteous 
surprise. 

At this minute Mr. Gale entered from the front shop to 
show a customer some delf plates ; and he did not see — but 
we did — the figure rise up from the porcelain stool, shake its 
head, which it held in its hand, and which kept its eyes fixed 
sadly on us, and disappeared behind the guillotine. 

" Come to the ' Gray's-inn Coffee-house,' " Pinto said, 
" and I will tell you how the notch came to the axe." And 
we walked down Holborn about thirty-seven minutes past six 
o'clock. 

If there is anything in the above statement which astonishes 
the reader, I promise him that in the next chapter of this little 
story he will be astonished still more. 



Part H. 

"You will excuse me," I said, to my companion, "for 
remarking, that when you addressed the individual sitting 
on the porcelain stool, with his head in his lap, your 
ordinarily benevolent features " — (this I confess was a 
bouncer, for between ourselves a more sinister and ill-looking 
rascal than Mens. P. I have seldom set eyes on) — " your ordi- 
narily handsome face wore an expression that was by no means 
pleasing. You grinned at the individual just as you did at me 

when you went up to the cei , pardon me, as I thought you 

did, when I fell down in a fit in your chambers ; " and I quali- 
fied my words in a great flutter and tremble ; I did not care 
to offend the man — I did not dare to offend the man. I 
thought once or twice of jumping into a cab and flying ; of 
taking refuge in Day and Martin's Blacking Warehouse ; of 
speaking to a policeman, but not one would come. I was 
this man's slave. I followed him like his dog. I could not 
get away from him. So, you see, I went on meanly con- 
versing with him, and affecting a simpering confidence. I 
remember, when I was a little boy at school, going up fawn- 
ing and smiling in this way to some great hulking bully of 
a sixth- form boy. So I said in a word, " Your ordinarily 
handsome face wore a disagreeable expression," &c. 

" It is ordinarily very handsome," said he, with such a leer 
at a couple of passers-by, that one of them cried, " Oh, crikey, 
here's a precious guy ! " and a child, in its nurse's arms, scream- 
ed itself into convulsions. " Oh, out, che suis tres-choli gar(on» 



l86 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

bien peau, cerdainement" continued Mr. Pinto ; "but you were 
right. That — that person was not very well pleased when he 
saw me. There was no love lost between us, as you say ; and 
the world never knew a more worthless miscreant. I hate him, 
voyez-vous ? I hated him alife ; I hate him dead. I hate him 
man ; I hate him ghost : and he know it, and tremble before 
me. If I see him twenty tausend years hence — and why not ? 
— I shall hate him still. You remarked how he was dressed ? " 

" In black satin breeches and striped stockings ; a white 
pique waistcoat, a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his 
hair in powder. He must have worn a pigtail — only " 

" Only it was cutoff'! Ha, ha, ha ! " Mr. Pinto cried, yelling 
a laugh, which I observed made the policemen stare very much. 
*' Yes. It was cut off by the same blow which took off the 
scoundrel's head — ho, ho, ho ! " And he made a circle with 
his hook-nailed finger round his own yellow neck, and grinned 
with a horrible triumph. " I promise you that fellow was sur- 
prised when he found his head in the pannier. Ha ! ha ! Do 
you ever cease to hate those whom you hate ? " — fire flashed 
terrifically from his glass eye as he spoke — " or to love dose 
whom you once loved. Oh, never, never ! " And here his 
natural eye was bedewed with tears. " But here we are at the 
* Gray's-inn Coffee-house.' James, what is the joint .? " 

That very respectful and efficient waiter brought in the bill 
of fare, and I, for my part, chose boiled leg of pork and pease- 
pudding, which my acquaintance said would do as well as 
anything else ; though I remarked he only trifled with the 
pease-pudding, and left all the pork on the plate. In fact, he 
scarcely ate anything. But he drank a prodigious quantity of 
wine ; and I must say that my friend Mr. Hart's port-wine is so 
good that I myself took — Avell, I should think, I took three 
glasses. Yes, three, certainly. He — I mean Mr. P. — the old 
rogue, was insatiable : for we had to call for a second bottle in 
no time. When that was gone my companion wanted another. 
A little red mounted up to his yellow cheeks as he drank the 
wine, and he winked at it in a strange manner. " I remember," 
said he, musing, " when port-wine was scarcely drunk in this 
country — though the Queen liked it, and so did Harley; but 
Bolingbroke didn't — he drank Florence and Champagne. Dr. 
Swift put water to his wine. ' Jonathan,' I once said to him 

but bah ! autres temps, aiitres moeurs. Another magnum, 

James." 

This was all very well. " My good sir," I said, " it may 
%yx\\.you to order bottles of '20 port, at a guinea a bottle ; but 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 187 

that kind of price does not suit me. I only happen to have 
thirty-four and sixpence in my pocket, of which I want a 
shilling for the waiter and eighteenpence for my cab. You rich 
foreigners and S7vells may spend what you like " (I had him 
there : for my friend's dress was as shabby as an old-clothes- 
man's) ; "but a man with a family, Mr. What-d'you-call'im, 
cannot afford to spend seven or eight hundred a year on his 
dinner alone." 

" Bah ! " he said. " Nunkey pays for us all, as you say. I 
will what you call stant the dinner, if you are so poor /'^ and 
again he gave that disagreeable grin, and placed an odious 
crooked-nailed and by no means clean finger to his nose. But 
I was not so afraid of him now, for we were in a public place ; 
and the three glasses of port-wine had, you see, given me 
courage. 

" What a pretty snuff-box ! " he remarked, as I handed him 
mine, which I am still old-fashioned enough to carry. It is a 
pretty old gold box enough, but valuable to me especially as a 
relic of an old, old relative, whom I can just remember as a 
child, when she was very kind to me. " Yes ; a pretty box. I 
can remember when many ladies — most ladies, carried a box — 
nay, two boxes — tabatiere and bonbonni^re. What lady carries 
snuff-box now, hey ? Suppose your astonishment if a lady in 
an assembly were to offer you z prise? I can remember a lady 
with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then ; 
\i\ih. patiiers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little 
high-heeled velvet shoes in the world ! — ah ! that was a time i 
that was a time ! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my 
mind's eye ! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk with 
thee, Eliza ? Aha, did I not love thee ? Did I not walk with 
thee then ? Do I not see thee still ? " 

This was passing strange. My ancestress — but there is no 
need to publish her revered name — did indeed live at Bungay 
St. Mary's, where she lies buried. She used to walk with a 
tortoise-shell cane. She used to wear little black velvet shoes, 
with the prettiest high heels in the world. 

" Did you — did you — know, then, my great gr-ndm-ther ? " 
I said. 

He pulled up his coat-sleeve — " Is that her name ? " he 
said. 

'' Eliza " 

There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old crea- 
ture written in red on his arm. 

" You knew her old," he said, divining my thoughts (with 



1 88 OUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

his strange Knack); " /knew her young and lovely. I danced 
with her at the Bury ball. Did I not, dear, dear Miss ? " 

As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny's fnaiden name. 

Her maiden name was Her honored married name 

was 

" She married your great gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won 
the Newmarket Plate," Mr. Pinto dryly remarked. 

Merciful powers ! I remember over the old shagreen knife 
and spoon-case on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print 
by Stubbs of that very horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, and 
his fair hair flowing over his shoulders, was over the mantel- 
piece, and Posiedon won the Newmarket Cup in the year 1783 ! 

" Yes ; you are right. I danced a minuet with her at Bury 
that very night, before I lost my poor leg. And I quarrelled 
with your grandf , ha ! " 

As he said " Ha ! " there came three quiet little taps on the 
table — it is the middle table in the " Gray's-inn Coffee-house," 
under the bust of the late Duke of VV-lI-ngt-n. 

" I fired in the air," he continued ; " did I not ? " (Tap, 
tap, tap.) " Your grandfather hit me in the leg. He married 
three months afterwards. ' Captain Brown,' I said, ' who could 
see Miss Sm-th without loving her ? ' She is there ! She is 
there ! " (Tap, tap, tap.) " Yes, my first love " 

But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means 
"No." 

" I forgot," he said, with a faint blush stealing over his wan 

features, " she was not my first love. In Germ in my own 

country — there was a young woman " 

Tap, tap, tap. There was here quite a lively little treble 
knock ; and when the old man said, " But I loved thee better 
than all the world, Eliza," the affirmative signal was briskly re- 
peated. 

And this I declare upon my honor. There was, I have 
said, a bottle of port-wine before us — I should say a decanter. 
That decanter was lifted up, and out of it into our respective 
glasses two bumpers of wine were poured. I appeal to Mr. 
Hart, the landlord — I appeal to James, the respectful and in- 
telligent waiter, if this statement is not true .■' And when we 
had finished that magnum, and I said — for I did not now in 
the least doubt of her presence — " Dear gr-nny, may we have 
another magnum ? " — the table distinctly rapped " No." 

" Now, my good sir," Mr. Pinto said, who really began to 
be affected by the wine, " you understand the interest I have 
taken in you. I loved Eliza " (of course I don't mention 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 185 

family names). " I knew you had that box which belonged to 
her — I will give you what you like for that box. Name your 
price at once, and I pay you on the spot." 

" Why, when we came out, you said you had not sixpence 
in your pocket." 

" Bah ! give you anything you like — fifty — a hundred — a 
tausend pound." 

" Come, come," said I, " the gold of the box may be worth 
nine guineas, and i^i^fa^on we will put at six more." 

" One tausend guineas ! " he screeched. " One tausend and 
fifty pound, dere ! " and he sank back in his chair — no, by the 
way, on his bench, for he was sitting with his back to one of 
the partitions of the boxes, as I dare say James remembers. 

'■^ Don't go on in this way," I continued, rather weakly, for 
I did not know whether I was in a dream. " If you offer me a 
thousand guineas for this box I must take it. Musn't I, dear 
gr-nny ? " 

The table most distinctly said, " Yes ; " and putting out his 
claws to seize the box, Mr. Pinto plunged his hooked nose into 
it and eagerly inhaled some of my 47 with a dash of Hardman, 

" But stay, you old harpy ! " I exclaimed, being now in a sort 
of rage, and quite familiar with him. " Where is the money. 
Where is the check ? " 

*' James, a piece of note-paper and a receipt-stamp ! " 

" This is all mighty well, sir," I said, " but I don't know 
you ; I never saw you before. I will trouble you to hand me 
that box back again, or give me a check with some known sig- 
nature." 

"Whose? Ha, Ha, HA!" 

The room happened to be very dark. Indeed, all the wait- 
ers were gone to supper, and there were only two gentlemen 
snoring in their respective boxes. I saw a hand come quiver- 
ing down from the ceiling — a very pretty hand, on which was a 
ring with a coronet, with a lion rampant gules for a crest. I saw 
that hand take a dip of ink and write across the paper. Mr. 
Pinto, then, taking a gray receipt-stamp out of his blue leather 
pocket-book, fastened it on to the paper by the usual process j 
and the hand then wrote across the receipt-stamp, went across 
the table and shook hands with Pinto, and then, as it waving 
him adieu, vanished in the direction of the ceiling. 

There was the paper before me, wet with ink. There was 
the pen which the hand had used. Does anybody doubt me ? 
/ have that pen now. A cedar-stick of a not uncommon sort, 
and holding one of Gillott's pens. It is in my inkstand now, I 



xgo 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



tell you. Anybody may see it. The handwriting on the check, 
for such the document was, was the writing of a female. It 
ran thus: — "London, midnight, March 31, 1862. Pay the 
bearer one thousand and fifty pounds. Rachel Sidonia. To 
Messrs. Sidonia, Pozzosanto and Co., London." 

" Noblest and best of women ! " said Pinto, kissing the sheet 
of paper with much reverence. " My good Mr. Roundabout, I 
suppose you do not question that signature ? " 

Indeed, the house of Sidonia, Pozzosanto & Co. is known 
to be one of the richest in Europe, and as for the Countess 
Rachel, she was known to be the chief manager of that enor- 
mously wealthy establishment. There was only one little diffi- 
culty, the Countess Rachel died last October. 

I pointed out this circumstance, and tossed over the paper 
to Pinto with a sneer. 

" Cest a brendre on a laisser," he said with some heat. " You 
literary men are all imbrudent ; but I did not tink you such a 
fool 7uie dis. Your box is not worth twenty pound, and I offer 
you a tausend because I know you want money to pay dat 
rascal Tom's college bills." (This strange man actually knew 
that my scapegrace Tom has been a source of great expense 
and annoyance to me.) "You see money costs me nothing, 
and you refuse to take it ! Once, twice ; will you take this 
check in exchange for your trumpery snuff-box ? " 

What could I do .'' My poor granny's legacy was valuable 
and dear to me, but after all a thousand guineas are not to be 
had every day. " Be it a bargain," said I. " Shall we have a 
glass of wine on it 1 " says Pinto ; and to this proposal I also 
unwillingly acceded, reminding him, by the way, that he had 
not yet told me the story of the headless man. 

"Your poor gr-ndm-ther was right just now, when she said 
she was not my first love. 'Twas one of those banale expres- 
sions " (here Mr. P. blushed once more) " which we use to 
women. We tell each she is our first passion. They reply 
with a similar illusory formula. No man is any woman's first 
love ; no woman any man's. We are in love in our nurse's 
arms, and women coquette with their eyes before their tongue 
can form a word. How could your lovely relative love me .-• I 
was far, far too old for her. I am older than I look. I am so 
old that you would not believe my age were I to tell you. I 
have loved many and many a woman before your relative. It 
has not always been fortunate for them to love me. Ah ! So- 
phronia ! Round the dreadful circus where you fell, and whence 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 



191 



I was dragged corpse-like by the heels, there sat multitudes 
more savage than the lions which mangled your sweet form ! 
Ah, tenez ! when we marclied to the terrible stake together at 
Valladolid — the Protestant and the J — But away with mem- 
ory 1 Boy ! it was happy for thy grandam that she loved me 
not. 

" During that strange period," he went on, " when the teem- 
ing Time was great with the revolution that was speedily to be 
born, I was on a mission in Paris with my excellent, my maligned 
friend, Cagliostro. Mesmer was one of our band. I seemed 
to occupy but an obscure rank in it : though, as you know, in 
secret societies the humble man may be a chief and director — 
the ostensible leader but a puppet moved by unseen hands. 
Never mind who was chief, or who was second. Never mind 
my age. It boots not to tell it : why shall I expose myself to 
your scornful incredulity — or reply to your questions in words 
that are familiar to you, but which yet you cannot understand ? 
Words are symbols of things which you know, or of things 
which you don't know. If you don't know them, to speak is 
idle." (Here I confess Mr. P. spoke for exactly thirty-eight 
minutes, about physics, metaphysics, language, the origin and 
destiny of man, during which time I was rather bored, and, to 
relieve my ennui, drank a half-glass or so of wine.) " Love, 
friend, is the fountain of youth ! " It may not happen to me 
once — once in an age : but when I love, then I am young. I 
loved when I was in Paris. Bathilde, Bathilde, I loved thee — 
ah, how fondly ! Wine, I say, more wine ! Love is ever young. 
I was a boy at the little feet of Bathilde de Bechamel — the fair, 
the fond, the fickle, ah, the false ! " The strange old man's 
agony was here really terrific, and he showed himself much more 
agitated than he had been when speaking about my gr-ndm-th-r. 

" I thought Blanche might love me. I could speak to her 
in the language of all countries, and tell her the lore of all 
ages. I could trace the nursery legends which she loved up to 
their Sanscrit source, and whispered to her the darkling mys- 
teries of Egyptian Magi. I could chant for her the wild chorus 
that rang in the dishevelled Eleusinian revel : I could tell her, 
and I would, the watchword never known but to one woman, 
the Saban Queen, which Hiram breathed in the abysmal ear 
of Solomon — You don't attend. Psha ! you have drunk too 
much wine ! " Perhaps I may as well own that I was not at- 
tending, for he had been carrying on for about fifty-seven 
minutes ; and I don't like a man to havetz// the talk to himself. 

" Blanche de Bechamel was wild, then, about this secret of 



192 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



Masonry. In early, early days I loved, I married a girl fair as 
Blanche, who, too, was tormented by curiosity, who, too, would 
peep into my closet — into the only secret I guarded from her. 
A dreadful fate befell poor Fatima. An accident shortened her 
life. Poor thing ! she had a foolish sister who urged her on. 
I always told her to beware of Ann. She died. They said 
her brothers killed me. A gross falsehood. Am I dead .-' If 
I were, could I pledge you in this wine .'' " 

" Was your name," I asked, quite bewildered, " was your 
name, pray, then, ever Blueb- ? " 

" Hush ! the waiter will overhear you. Methought we 
were speaking of Blanche de Bechamel. I loved her, young 
man. My pearls, and diamonds, and treasures, my wit, my 
wisdom, my passion, I flung them all into the child's lap. I 
was a fool ! Was strong Samson not as weak as I ? Was 
Solomon the Wise much better when Balkis wheedled him ? I 

said to the king But enough of that, I spake of Blanche 

de Be'chamel. 

" Curiosity was the poor child's foible. I could see, as I 
talked to her, that her thoughts were elsewhere (as yours, my 
friend, have been absent once or twice to-night). To know 
the secret of Masonry was the wretched child's mad desire. 
With a thousand wiles, smiles, caresses, she strove to coax it 
from me — from me — ha ! ha ! 

" I had an apprentice — the son of a dear friend, who died 
by my side at Rossbach, when Soubise, with whose army I 
happened to be, suffered a dreadful defeat for neglecting my 
advice. The young Chevalier Goby de Mouchy was glad 
enough to serve as my clerk, and help in some chemical ex- 
periments in which I was engaged with my friend Dr. Mesmer. 
Bathilde saw this young man. Since women were, has it not 
been their business to smile and deceive, to fondle and lure ? 
Away ! From the very first it has been so ! " And as my 
companion spoke, he looked as wicked as the serpent that 
coiled round the tree, and hissed a poisoned counsel to the 
first woman. 

" One evening I went, as was my wont, to see Blanche. 
She was radiant : she was wild with spirits : a saucy triumph 
blazed in her blue eyes. She talked, she rattled in her childish 
way. She uttered, in the course of her rhapsody, a hint — an 
intimation — so terrible that the truth flashed across me in a 
moment. Did I ask her > She would lie to me. But I know 
how to make falsehood impossible. And I ordered her to go to 
sleep:' 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 



193 



At this moment the clock (after its previous convulsions) 
sounded Twelve. And as the new Editor * of the ConihlU 
Magazine — and he, I promise you, won't stand any nonsense — 
will only allow seven pages, I am obliged to leave off at the 

VERY MOST INTE'iESTING POINT OF THE StORY. 

Part III. 

" Are you of our fraternity ? I see you are not. The secret 
which Mademoiselle de Be'chamel confided to me in her mad 
triumph and wild hoyden spirits — she was but a child, poor 
thing, poor thing, scarce fifteen : — but I love them young — a 
folly not unusual with the old ! " (Here Mr. Pinto thrust his 
knuckles into his hollow eyes ; and, I am sorry to say, so little 
regardful was he of personal cleanliness, that his tears made 
streaks of white over his gnarled dark hands.) " Ah, at fifteen, 
poor child, thy fate was terrible ! Go to ! It is not good to 
love me, friend. They prosper not who do. I divine you. 
You need not say what you are thinking " 

In truth, I was thinking, if girls fall in love with this sal- 
low, hook-nosed, glass-eyed, wooden-legged, dirty, hideous old 
man, with the sham teeth, they have a queer taste. That is 
what I was thinking. 

"Jack Wilkes said the handsomest man in London had but 
half an hour's start of him. And without vanity, I am scarcely 
uglier than Jack Wilkes. We were members of the same club 
at Medenham Abbey, Jack and I, and had many a merry night 
together. Well, sir, I — Mary of Scotland knew me but as a 
little hunch-backed music-master; and yet, and yet, I think 

she was not indififerent to her David Riz and she came to 

misfortune. They all do — they all do ! " 

" Sir, you are wandering from your point ! " I said, with 
some severity. For, really, for this old humbug to hint that he 
had been the baboon who frightened the club at Medenham, 
that he had been in the Inquisition at Valladolid — that under 
the name of D. Riz, as he called it, he had known the lovely 
Queen of Scots — was a liifle too much. " Sir," then I said, 
"you were speaking about a Miss de Be'chamel. I really have 
not time to hear all your biography." 

" Faith, the good wine gets into my head." (I should think 
so, the old toper ! Four bottles all but two glasses.) " To 
return to poor Blanche. As I sat laughing, joking with her,, 
she let slip a word, a little word, which filled me with dismay. 

•Mr. Thackeray retired from the Editorship of the Comhill Magazitu in March 1862.. 

13 



194 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



Some one had told her a part of the Secret — the secret which 
has been divulged scarce thrice in three thousand years — the 
Secret of the Freemasons. Do you know what happens to 
those uninitiate who learn that secret ? to those wretched men, 
the initiate who reveal it ? " 

As Pinto spoke to me, he looked through and through me 
with his horrible piercing glance, so that I sat quite uneasily on 
my bench. He continued : " Did I question her awake ? I 
knew she would lie to me. Poor child ! I loved her no less 
because I did not believe a word she said. I loved her blue 
eye, her golden hair, her delicious voice, that was true in song, 
though when she spoke, false as Eblis ! You are aware that I 
possess in rather a remarkable degree what we have agreed to 
call the mesmeric power. I set the unhappy girl to sleep. 
Then she was obliged to tell me all. It was as I had surmised. 
Goby de Mouchy, my wretched, besotted, miserable secretary, 
in his visits to the chateau of the old Marquis de Be'chamel, 
who was one of our society, had seen Blanche. I suppose it 
was because she had been warned that he was worthless, and 
poor, artful, and a coward, she loved him. She wormed out of 
the besotted wretch the secrets of our Order, ' Did he tell you 
the NUMBER ONE ? ' I askcd. 

" She said, 'Yes.' 

" ' Did he,' I further inquired, 'tell you the ' 

" ' Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me ! ' she said, writhing on 
the sofa, where she lay in the presence of the Marquis de 
Bechamel, her most unhappy father. Poor Bechamel, poor 
Bdchamel ! How pale he looked as I spoke ! ' Did he tell 
you,' I repeated with a dreadful calm, * the number two ? ' 
She said, ' Yes.' 

" The poor old Marquis rose up, and clasping his hands, 

fell on his knees before Count Cagl Bah ! I went by a 

different name then. Vat's in a name. Dat vich ve call a 
Rosicrucian by any other name vil smell as sveet. ' Monsieur,' 
he said, ' I am old — I am rich. I have five hundred thousand 
livres of rentes in Picardy. I have half as much in Artois. I 
have two hundred and eighty thousand on the Grand Livre. I 
am promised by my Sovereign a dukedom and his orders with 
a reversion to my heir. I am a Grandee of Spain of the First 
Class, and Duke of Volovento. Take my titles, my ready 
money, my life, my honor, everything I have in the world, but 
don't ask the third question.' 

" ' Godefroid de Bouillon, Comte de Bechamel, Grandee of 
Spain and Prince of Volovento, in our Assembly what was the 



THE NOTCH O.V THE AXE. 



195 



oath you swore ? ' " The old man writhed as he remembered 
its terrific purport. 

" Though my heart was racked with agony, and I would 
have died, ay, cheerfully " (died, indeed, as if that were a pen- 
alty !) " to spare yonder lovely child a pang, I said to her 
calmly, * Blanche de Be'chamel, did Goby de Mouchy tell you 
secret number three ? ' 

" She whispered a oui that was quite faint, faint and small. 
But her poor father fell in convulsions at her feet. 

" She died suddenly that night. Did I not tell you those I 
love come to no good. When General Bonaparte crossed the 
Saint Bernard, he saw in the convent an old monk with a white 
beard, wandering about the corridors, cheerful and rather stout, 
but mad — mad as a March hare. ' General,' I said to him, 
* did you ever see that face before ? ' He had not. He had 
not mingled much with the higher class of our society before 
the Revolution. / knew the poor old man well enough ; he 
was the last of a noble race, and I loved his child." 

" And did she die by .? '" 

" Man ! did I say so ? Do I whisper the secrets of the 
Vehmgericht ? I say she died that night : and he — he, the 
heartless, the villain, the betrayer, — you saw him seated in yon- 
der curiosity-shop, by yonder guillotine, with his scoundrelly 
head in his lap. 

" You saw how slight that instrument was ? It was one of 
the first which Guillotin made, and which he showed to private 
friends in a hangar in the Rue Picpus, where he lived. The 
invention created some little conversation amongst scientific 
men at the time, though I remember a machine in Edinburgh 
of a very similar construction, two hundred — well, many, many 
years ago — and at a breakfast which Guillotin gave he showed 
us the instrument, and much talk arose amongst us as to 
whether people suffered under it. 

" And now I must tell you what befell the traitor who had 
caused all this sufifering. Did he know that the poor child's 
death was a sentence ? He felt a cowardly satisfaction that 
with her was gone the secret of his treason. Then he began 
to doubt. I had means to penetrate all his thoughts, as well 
as to know his acts. Then he became a slave to a horrible 
fear. He fled in abject terror to a convent. They still ex- 
isted in Paris ; and behind the walls of Jacobins the wretch 
thought himself secure. Poor fool ! I had but to set one of 
my somnambulists to sleep. Her spirit went forth and spied 
the shuddering wretch in his cell. She described the street, 



ig6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

the gate, the convent, the very dress which he wore, and which 
you saw to-day. 

" And now this is what happened. In his chamber in the 
Rue St. Honore, at Paris, sat a man alone — a man who has 
been maUgned, a man who has been called a knave and char- 
latan, a man who has been persecuted even to the death, it is 
said, in Roman Inquisitions, forsooth, and elsewhere. Ha ! 
ha ! A man who has a mighty will. 

" And looking towards the Jacobins Convent (of which, 
from his chamber, he could see the spires and trees), this man 
WILLED. And it was not yet dawn. And he willed ; and one 
who was lying in his cell in the convent of Jacobins, awake 
and shuddering with terror for a crime which he had com- 
mitted, fell asleep. 

" But though he was asleep his eyes were open. 

" And after tossing and writhing, and clinging to the pallet, 
and saying, 'No, I will not go,' he rose up and donned his 
clothes — a gray coat, a vest of white pique, black satin small- 
clothes, ribbed silk stockings, and a white stock with a steel 
buckle ; and he arranged his hair, and he tied his queue, all the 
while being in that strange somnolence which walks, which 
moves, which flies sometimes, which sees, which is indifferent 
to pain, which obeys. And he put on his hat, and he went 
forth from his cell ; and though the dawn was not yet, he trod 
the corridors as seeing them. And he passed into the cloister, 
and then into the garden where lie the ancient dead. And he 
came to the wicket, which Brother Jerome was opening just at 
the dawning. And the crowd was already waiting with their 
cans and bowls to receive the alms of the good brethren. 

" And he passed through the crowd and went on his way, 
and the few people then abroad who marked him, said, ' Tiens ! 
How very odd he looks ! He looks like a man walking in his 
sleep ! ' This was said by various persons : — 

" By milk-women, with their cans and carts, coming into the 
town^ 

" By roysterers who had been drinking at the taverns of the 
Barrier, for it was Mid-Lent. 

" By the sergeant of the watch, who eyed him sternly as he 
passed near their halberds. 

" But he passed on unmoved by the halberds, 

" Unmoved by the cries of the roysterers, 

" By the market-women coming with their milk and eggs. 

" He walked through the Rue St. Honore, I say : — 

" By the Rue Rambuteau, 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 



197 



" By the Rue St. Antoine, 

" By the King's Chateau of the Bastile, 

" By the Faubourg St. Antoine. 

*' And he came to No. 29 in the Rue Picpus — a house which 
then stood between a court and garden — 

" That is, there was a building of one story, with a great 
coach door. 

' " Then there was a court, around which were stables, coach- 
houses, offices. 

"Then there was a house — a two-storied house, with a 
perron in front. 

" Behind the house was a garden — a garden of two hundred 
and fifty French feet in length. 

" And as one hundred feet of France equal one hundred 
and six feet of England, this garden, my friends, equalled ex- 
actly two hundred and sixty-five feet of British measure. 

" In the centre of the garden was a fountain and a statue — 
or, to speak more correctly, two statues. One was recumbent, 
— a man. Over him, sabre in hand, stood a woman. 

" The man was Olofernes. The woman was Judith. From 
the head, from the trunk, the water gushed. It was the taste 
of the doctor ; — was it not a droll of taste .'' 

" At the end of the garden was the doctor's cabinet of study. 
My faith, a singular cabinet, and singular pictures ! — 

" Decapitation of Charles Premier at Vitehall. 

" Decapitation of Montrose at Edimbourg. 

" Decapitation of Cinq Mars. When I tell you that he was 
a man of a taste, charming ! 

" Through this garden, by these statues, up these stairs, 
went the pale figure of him who, the porter said, knew the way 
of the house. He did. Turning neither right nor left, he 
seemed to walk through the statues, the obstacles, the flower- 
beds, the stairs, the door, the tables, the chairs. 

" In the corner of the room was that instrument which 
Guillotin had just invented and perfected. One day he was to 
lay his own head under his own axe. Peace be to his name ! 
With him I deal not ! 

" In a frame of mahogany, neatly worked, was a board with a 
half-circle in it, over which another board fitted. Above was a 
heavy axe, which fell — you know how. It was held up by a 
rope, and when this rope was untied, or cut, the steel fell. 

" To the story which I now have to relate you may give 
credence, or not, as you will. The sleeping man went up to 
that instrument. 



198 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



" He laid his head in it, asleep." 

" Asleep ! " 

" He then took a little penknife out of the pocket of hia 
white dimity waistcoat. 

" He cut the rope asleep. 

" The axe descended on the head of the traitor and villain. 
The notch in it was made by the steel buckle of his stock, 
which was cut through. 

" A strange legend has got abroad that after the deed was 
done, the figure rose, took the head from the basket, walked 
forth through the garden, and by the screaming porters at the 
gate, and went and laid itself clown at the Morgue. But for 
this I will not vouch. Only of this be sure. ' There are more 
things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in 
your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through the 
chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, 
and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu ! Remember me. 
Ha!' tis dawn," Pinto said. And he was gone. 

I am ashamed to say that my first movement was to clutch 
the check which he had left with me, and which I was deter- 
mined to present the very moment the bank opened. I know 
the importance of these things, and that men chaiige their mind 
sometimes. I sprang through the streets to the great banking 
house of Manasseh in Duke Street. It seemed to me as if I 
actually fiew as I walked. As the clock struck ten I was at 
the counter and laid down my check. 

The gentleman who received it, who was one of the Hebrew 
persuasion, as were the other two hundred clerks of the establish- 
ment, having looked at the draft with terror in his countenance, 
then looked at me, then called to himself two of his fellow- 
clerks, and queer it was to see all their aquiline beaks over the 
paper. 

" Come, come ! " said I, " don't keep me here all day. 
Hand me over the money, short, if you please ! " for I was, you 
see, a little alarmed, and so determined to assume some extra 
bluster. 

" Will you have the kindness to step into the parlor to the 
partners .'' " the clerk said, and I followed him. 

" What, again ? " shrieked a bald-headed, red-whiskered 
gentleman, whom I knew to be Mr. Manasseh. " Mr. Salathiel, 
this is too bad ! Leave me with this gentleman, S." And the 
clerk disappeared. 

" Sir," he said, " I know how you came by this ; the Count 
de Pinto gave it you. It is too bad ! I honor my parents ; I 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 



199 



honor their parents ; I honor their bills ! But this one of 
grandma's is too bad — it is, upon my word, now ! She've been 
dead these five-and-thirty years. And this last four months 
she has left her burial-place and took to drawing on our 'ouse ! 
It's too bad, grandma ; it is too bad ! " and he appealed to me, 
and tears actually trickled down his nose. 

" Is it the Countess Sidonia's check or not ? " I asked, 
haughtily. 

" But, I tell you she's dead ! It's a shame ! — it's a shame ! — 
it is, grandmamma ! " and he cried, and wiped his great nose in 
his yellow pocket-handkerchief. " Look year — will you take 
pounds instead of guineas ? She's dead, I tell you ! It's no 
go ! Take the pounds — one tausend pound ! — ten nice, neat, 
crisp hundred-pound notes, and go away vid you, do ! " 

" I will have my bond, sir, or nothing," I said ; and I put 
on an attitude of resolution which I confess surprised even 
myself. 

" Wery veil," he shrieked, with many oaths, " then you shall 
have noting — ha, ha, ha ! — noting but a policeman ! Mr. 
Abednego, call a policeman ! Take that, you humbug and 
impostor ! " and here, with an abundance of frightful language 
which I dare not repeat, the wealthy banker abused and defied 
me. 

Alt bout du compte, what was I to do, if a banker did not 
choose to honor a check drawn by his dead grandmother .? I 
began to wish I had my snuff-box back. I began to think I 
was a fool for changing that little old-fashioned gold for this 
shp of strange paper. 

Meanwhile the banker had passed from his fit of anger to a 
paroxysm of despair. He seemed to be addressing some per- 
son invisible, but in the room : " Look here, ma'am, you've 
really been coming it too strong. A hundred thousand in six 
months, and now a thousand more ! The 'ouse can't stand it ; 
it won't stand it, I say ! What .-• Oh I mercy, mercy ! " 

As he uttered these words, A HAND fluttered over the 
table in the air ! It was a female hand : that which I had seen 
the night before. That female hand took a pen from the green 
baize table, dipped it in a silver inkstand, and wrote on a quarter 
of a sheet of foolscap on the blotting-book, " How about the 
diamond robbery ? If you do not pay, I will tell him where 
they are." 

What diamonds ? what robbery } what was this mystery ? 
That will never be ascertained, for the wretched man's de- 
meanor instantly changed. " Certainly, sir ; — oh, certainly," 



200 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

he said, forcing a grin. " How will you have the money, sir? 
All right, Mr. Abednego. This way out." 

" I hope I shall o^ten see you again," I said ; on which I 
own poor Manasseh gave a dreadful grin, and shot back into 
his parlor. 

I ran home, clutching the ten delicious, crisp hundred 
pounds, and the dear little fifty which made up the account. I 
flew through the streets again. I got to my chambers. I 
bolted the outer doors. I sank back in my great chair, and 
slept. * * * * 

My first thing on waking was to feel for my money. Per- 
dition 1 Where was I ? Ha ! — on the table before me was my 
grandmother's snuff-box, and by its side one of those awful — 
those admirable — sensation novels, which I had been reading, 
and which are full of delicious wonder. 

But that the guillotine is still to be seen at Mr. Gale's, No. 
47 High Holborn, I give you my honor. I suppose I was 
dreaming about it. I don't know. What is dreaming ? What 
is life } Why shouldn't I sleep on the ceiling ? — and am I sit- 
ting on it now, or on the floor ? I am puzzled. But enough. 
If the fashion for sensation novels goes on, I tell you I will 
write one in fifty volumes. For the present, DIXI. But be- 
tween ourselves, this Pinto, who fought at the Colosseum, who 
was nearly being roasted by the Inquisition, and sang duets at 
Holyrood, I am rather sorry to lose him after three little bits of 
Roundabout Papers. Et vous ? 



DE FINIBUS. 

When Swift was in love with Stella, and despatching her a 
letter from London thrice a month by the Irish packet, you may 
remember how he would begin letter No. xxiii., we will say, on 
the very day when xxii. had been sent away, stealing out of the 
coffee-house or the assembly so as to be able to prattle with his 
dear; "never letting go her kind hand, as it were," as some 
commentator or other has said in speaking of the Dean and his 
amour. When Mr. Johnson, walking to Dodsley's, and touch- 
ing the posts in Pall Mall as he walked, forgot to pat the head 
of one of them, he went back and imposed his hands on it, — 
impelled I know not by what superstition. I have this I hope 



DE FINIBUS. 20I 

not dangerous mania too. As soon as a piece of work is out o£ 
hand, and before going to sleep, I like to begin another ; it may 
be to write only halt" a dozen lines : bi3t that is something 
towards Number the Next. The printer's boy has not yet 
reached Green Arbor Court with the copy. Those people who 
were alive half an hour since, Pendennis, Clive Newcome, and 
(what do you call him ? what was the name of the last hero ? I 
remember now !) Philip Firmin, have hardly drunk their glass 
of wine, and the mammas have only this minute got the chil- 
dren's cloaks on, and have been bowed out of my premises — and 
here I come back to the study again : tamen usque recurro. 
How lonely it looks now all these people are gone ! My dear 
good friends, some folks are utterly tired of you, and say, 
" What a poverty of friends the man has ! He is always ask- 
ing us to meet those Pendennises, Newcomes, and so forth. 
Why does he not introduce us to some new characters ? Why 
is he not thrilling like Twostars, learned and profound like 
Threestars, exquisitely humorous and human like Fourstars ? 
Why, finally, is he not somebody else.''" My good people, it 
is not only impossible to please you all, but it is absurd to try. 
The dish which one man devours, another dislikes. Is the 
dinner of to-day not to your taste .-' Let us hope to-morrow's 
entertainment will be more agreeable. * * i resume my 
original subject. What an odd, pleasant, humorous, melancholy 
feeling it is to sit in the study, alone and quiet, now all these 
people are gone who have been boarding and lodging with me 
for twenty months ! They have interrupted my rest : they have 
plagued me at all sorts of minutes : they have thrust themselves 
upon me when I was ill, or wished to be idle, and I have growled 
out a "Be hanged to you, can't you leave me alone now?" 
Once or twice they have prevented my going out to dinner. 
Many and many a time they have prevented my coming home, 
because I knew they were there waiting in the study, and a 
plague take them ! and I have left home and family, and gone 
to dine at the Club, and told nobody where I went. They have 
bored me, those people. They have plagued me at all sorts of 
uncomfortable hours. They have made such a disturbance in 
my mind and house, that sometimes I have hardly known what 
was going on in my family, and scarcely have heard what my 
neighbor said to me. They are gone at last ; and you would 
expect me to be at ease ? Far from it. I should almost be 
glad if Woolcomb would walk in and talk to me ; or Twysden 
reappear, take his place in that chair opposite me, and begin 
one of his tremendous stories. 



202 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Madmen, you know, see visions, hold conversations with, 
even draw the likeness of, people invisible to you and me. Is 
this making of people out of fancy madness ? and are novel- 
writers at all entitled to strait-waistcoats ? I often forget 
people's names in life ; and in my own stories contritely own 
that I make dreadful blunders regarding them ; but I declare, 
my dear sir, with respect to the personages introduced into your 
humble servant's fables, I know the people utterly — I know the 
sound of their voices. A gentleman came in to see me the 
other day, who was so like the picture of Philip Firniin in Mr. 
Walker's charming drawings in the ComJiill Magazine, that he 
was quite a curiosity to me. The same eyes, beard, shoulders, 
just as you have seen them from month to month. Well, he is 
not like the Philip Firmin in my mind. Asleep, asleep in the 
grave, lies the bold, the generous, the reckless, the tender- 
hearted creature whom I have made to pass through those 
adventures which have just been brought to an end. It is years 
since I heard the laughter ringing, or saw the bright blue eyes. 
When L knew him both were young. I become young as 1 
think of him. And this morning he was alive again in this 
room, ready to laugh, to fight, or to weep. As I write, do you 
know, it is the gray of the evening ; the house is quiet ; every- 
body is out ; the room is getting a little dark, and I look rather 
wistfully up from the paper with perhaps ever so little fancy 

that HE MAY COME IN. No ? No movement. No 

gray shade, growing more palpable, out of which at last look 
the well-known eyes. No, the printer came and took him away 
with the last page of the proofs. And with the printer's boy 
did the whole cortege of ghosts flit away, invisible ? Ha ! stay ! 
what is this .-' Angels and ministers of grace ! The door opens, 
and a dark form enters, bearing a black — a black suit of 

clothes. It is John. He says it is time to dress for dinner. 

***** 

Every man who has had his German tutor, and has been 
coached through the famous " Faust " of Goethe (thou wert my 
instructor, good old Weissenborn, and these eyes beheld the 
great master himself in dear little Weimar town !) has read 
those charming verses which are prefixed to the drama, in which 
the poet reverts to the time when his work was first composed, 
and recalls the friends now departed, who once listened to his 
song. The dear shadows rise up around him, he says ; he lives 
in the past again. It is to-day which appears vague and vision- 
ary. We humbler writers cannot create Fausts, or raise up 
monumental works that shall endure for all ages ; but our books 



DE FINIBUS. 



203 



are diaries, in which our own feelings must of necessity be set 
down. As we look to the page written last month, or ten years 
ago, we remember the day and its events ;,the child ill, mayhap, 
in the adjoining room, and the doubts and fears which lacked 
the brain as it still pursued its work ; the dear old friend who 
read the commencement of the tale, and whose gentle hand 
shall be laid in ours no more. I own for my part that, in read- 
ing pages which this hand penned formerly, I often lost sight 
of the text under my eyes. It is not the worfs I see ; but that 
past day ; that by-gone page of life's history ; that tragedy, 
comedy, it may be, which our little home company was enacting ; 
that merry-making which we shared ; that funeral which we 
followed ; that bitter, bitter grief which we buried. 

And, such being the state of my mind, I pray gentle read- 
ers to deal kindly with their humble servant's manifold short- 
comings, blunders, and slips of memory. As sure as I read a 
P3ge of my own composition, I find a fault or two, half a dozen. 
Jones is called Brown. Brown, who is dead, is brou2:ht to life. 
Aghast, and months after the number was printed, I saw that I 
had called Philip Firmin, Clive Newcome. Now Clive New- 
come is the hero of another story by the reader's most obedient 
writer. The two men are as different, in my mind's eye, as — • 
as Lord Palmerston and Mr. Disraeli let us say. But there is 
that blunder at page 990, line 76, volume 84, of the Cortihill 
Magazine, and it is past mending ; and I wish in my life I had 
made no worse blunders or errors than that which is hereby 
acknowledged. 

Another Finis written. Another mile-stone passed on this 
journey from birth to the next world ! Sure it is a subject for 
solemn cogitation. Shall we continue this stor3'-telling busi- 
ness and be voluble to the end of our age ? Will it not be 
presently time, O prattler, to hold your tongue, and let younger 
people speak ? I have a friend, a painter, who, like other per- 
sons who shall be nameless, is growing old. He has never 
painted with such laborious finish as his works now show. 
This master is still the most humble and diligent of scholars. 
Of Art, his mistress, he is always an eager, reverent pupil. In 
his calling, in yours, in mine, industry and humility will help 
and comfort us. A word with you. In a pretty large experi- 
ence I have not found the men who write books superior in wit 
or learning to those who don't write at all. In regard of mere 
information, non-writers must often be superior to writers. You 
don't expect a lawyer in full practice to be conversant with all 
kinds of literature ; he is too busy with his law ; and so a 



204 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



writer is commonly too busy with his own books to be able to 
bestow attention on the works of otlier people. After a day's 
work (in which I have been depicting, let us say, the agonies of 
Louisa on parting with the Captain, or the atrocious behavior 
of the wicked Marquis to Lady Emily) I march to the Club, 
proposing to improve my mind and keep myself "posted up," 
as ihe Americans phrase it, with the literature of the day. And 
what happens ? Given, a \valk after luncheon, a pleasing book, 
and a most comfortable arm-chair by the fire, and you know 
the rest. A doze ensues. Pleasing book drops suddenly, is 
picked up once with an air of some confusion, is laid presently 
softly in }ap : head falls on comfortable arm-chair cushion ; 
eyes close : soft nasal music is heard. Am I telling Club 
secrets ? Of afternoons, after lunch, I say, scores of sensible 
fogies have a doze. Perhaps I have fallen asleep over that 
very book to which " Finis " has just been written. " And if 
the writer sleeps, what happens to the readers ? " says Jone^, 
coming down upon me with his lightning wit. What ? • You did 
sleep over it ? And a very good thing too. These eyes have 
more than once seen a friend dozing over pages which this hand 
has written. There is a vignette somewhere in one of my 
books of a friend so caught napping with " Pendennis," or the 
" Newcomes," in his lap ; and if a writer can give you a sweet- 
soothing, harmless sleep, has he not done you a kindness ? So 
is the author who excites and interests you worthy of your 
thanks and benedictions. I am troubled with fever and ague, 
that seizes me at odd intervals and prostrates me for a day. 
There is cold fit, for which, I am thankful to say, hot brandy-and- 
water is prescribed, and this induces hot fit, and so on. In one or 
two of these fits I have read novels with the most fearful content- 
ment of mind. Once on the Mississippi, it was my dearly 
beloved " Jacob Faithful : " once at Frankfort O. M., the de- 
lightful " Vingt Ans Apres " of Monsieur Dumas : once at Tun- 
bridge Wells, the thrilling " Woman in White i " and these books 
gave me amusement from morning till sunset. I remember those 
ague fits with a great deal of pleasure and gratitude. Think of a 
whole day in bed, and a good novel for a companion. No cares : 
no remorse about idleness : no visitors : and the Woman in 
White or the Chevalier d'Artagnan to tell me stories from dawn 
to night ! " Please, ma'am, my master's compliments, and can 
he have the third volume ? " (This message was sent to an 
astonished friend and neighbor who lent me, volume by volume, 
the W. in IV.) How do you like your novels? I like mine 
Strong, " hot with," and no mistake : no love-making : no obser- 



DE FINIBUS. 



205 



va.tions about society : little dialogue, except where the charac- 
ters are bullying each other : plenty of fighting : and a villain 
in the cupboard, who is to suffer tortures just before Finis. I 
don't like your melancholy Finis. I never read the history of a 
consumptive heroine twice. If I might give a short hint to an 
impartial writer (as the Examiner used to say in old days), it 
would be to act, fwt a la mode le pays de Pole (I think that 
was the phraseology), but always to give quarter. In the story 
of Philip, just come to an end, I have the permission of the 
author to state that he was going to drown the two villains of 

the piece — a certain Doctor F and a certain Mr. T. H 

on board the " President," or some other tragic ship — but you 
see I relented. I pictured to myself Firmin's ghastly face 
amid the crowd of shuddering people on that reeling deck in 
the lonely ocean, and thought, " Thou ghastly lying wretch, 
thou shalt not be drowned ; thou shalt have a fever only ; 
a knowledge of thy danger ; and a chance — ever so small a 
chance — of repentance." I wonder whether he did repent 
when he found himself in the yellow-fever, in Virginia ? The 
probability is, he fancied that his son had injured him very 
much, and forgave him on his death-bed. Do you imagine 
there's a great deal of genuine right-down remorse in the 
world .? Don't people rather find excuses which make their 
minds easy ; endeavor to prove to themselves that they have 
been lamentably belied and misunderstood ; and try and 
forgive the persecutors who will present that bill when it is 
due ; and not bear malice against the cruel ruffian who takes 
them to the police-office for stealing the spoons ? Years ago I 
had a quarrel with a certain well-known person (I believed a 
statement regarding him which his friends imparted to me, and 
which turned out to be quite incorrect). To his dying day that 
quarrel was never quite made up. I said to his brother, " Why 
is your brother's soul still dark against me } It is I who ought 
to be angry and unforgiving : for I was in the wrong." In the 
region which they now inhabit (for Finis has been set to the 
volumes of the lives of both here below), if they take any cog- 
nizance of our squabbles, and tittle-tattles, and gossips on earth 
here, I hope they admit that my little error was not of a nature 
unpardonable. If you have never committed a worse, my good 
sir, surely the score against you will not be heavy. Ha, dileciis- 
simi fratres ! It is in regard of sins not found out that we may 
say or sing (in an under- tone, in a most penitent and lugubrious 
minor key). Miserere nobis miseris peccatoribus. 

Among the sins of commission which novel-writers not 



2o6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

seldom perpetrate, is the sin of grandiloquence, or tall-talking, 
against which, for my part, I will offer up a special libera me. 
This is the sin of schoolmasters, governesses, critics, sermoners, 
and instructors of young or old people. Nay (for I am making 
a clean breast, and liberating my soul), perhaps of all the 
novel-spinners now extant, the present speaker is the most ad- 
dicted to preaching. Does he not stop perpetually in his story 
and begin to preach to you ? When he ought to be engaged 
with business, is he not forever taking the Muse by the sleeve, 
and plaguing her with some of his cynical sermons ? I cry 
peccavi loudly and heartily. I tell you I would like to be able 
to write a story which should show no egotism whatever — in 
which there should be no reflections, no cynicism, no vulgarity 
(and so forth), but an incident in every other page, a villain, a 
battle, a mystery in every chapter. I should like to be able to 
feed a reader so spicily as to leave him hungering and thirsting 
for more at the end of every monthly meal. 

Alexandre Dumas describes himself, when inventing the 
plan of a work, as lying silent on his back for two whole days 
on the deck of a yacht in a Mediterranean port. At the end 
of the two days he arose and called for dinner. In those two 
days he had built his plot. He had moulded a mighty clay, to 
be cast presently in perennial brass. The chapters, the char- 
acters, the incidents, the combinations were all arranged in the 
artist's brain ere he set a pen to paper. My Pegasus won't fly, 
so as to let me survey the field below me. He has no wings, 
he is blind of one eye certainl}'^, he is restive, stubborn, slow; 
crops a hedge when he ought to be galloping, or gallops when 
he ought to be quiet. He never will show off when I want him. 
Sometimes he goes at a pace which surprises me. Some- 
times, when I most wish him to make the running, the brute 
turns restive, and I am obliged to let him take his own time. 
I wonder do other novel-writers experience this fatalism .'' They 
must go a certain waj'-, in spite of themselves. I have been 
surprised at the observations made by some of my characters. 
It seems as if an occult Power was moving the pen. The per- 
sonage does or says something, and I ask, how the dickens did 
he come to think of that } Every man has remarked in dreams, 
the vast dramatic power which is sometimes evinced ; I won't 
say the surprising power, for nothing does surprise you in 
dreams. But those strange characters you meet make instant 
observations of which you never can have thought previously. 
In like manner, the imagination foretells things. We spake 
anon of the inflated style of some writers. What also if there 



DE FIN IB US. 



207 



is an affiated style, — when a writer is like a Pythoness on her 
oracle tripod, and mighty words, words which he cannot help, 
come blowing, and bellowing, and whistling, and moaning 
through the speaking pipes of his bodily organ ? I have told 
you it was a very queer shock to me the other day when, with 
a letter of introduction in his hand, the artist's (not my) Philip 
Firmin walked into this room, and sat down in the chair oppo- 
site. In the novel of " Pendennis," written ten years ago, 
there is an account of a certain Costigan, whom I had invent- 
ed (as I suppose authors invent their personages out of scraps, 
heel-taps, odds and ends of characters). I was smoking in a 
tavern parlor one night — and this Costigan came into the room 
alive — the very man : — the most remarkable resemblance of the 
printed sketches of the man, of the rude drawings in which I 
had depicted him. He had the same little coat, the same 
battered hat, cocked on one eye, the same twinkle in that eye. 
" Sir," said I, knowing him to be an old friend whom I had 
met in unknown regions, " sir," I said, " may I offer you a glass 
of brandy-and-water ? " " Bedad, ye may" says he, " and PU 
sing ye a song tii." Of course he spoke with an Irish brogue. 
Of course he had been in the army. In ten minutes he pulled 
out an Army Agent's account, whereon his name was written. 
A few months after we read of him in a police court. How 
had I come to know him, to divine him ? Nothing shall con- 
vince me that I have not seen that man in the world of spirits. 
In the world of spirits-and-water I know I did : but that is a 
mere quibble of words. I was not surprised when he spoke in 
an Irish brogue. I had had cognizance of him before some- 
how. Who has not felt that little shock which arises when a 
person, a place, some words in a book (there is always a collo- 
cation) present themselves to you, and you know that you have 
before met the same person, words, scene, and so forth .? 

They used to call the good Sir Walter the "Wizard of the 
North." What if some writer should appear who can write so 
enchantingly that he shall be able to call into actual life the 
people whom he invents ? What if Mignon, and Margaret, and 
Goetz von Berlichingen are alive now (though I don't say they 
are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in 
at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose 
TJncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide silent 
in ? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter with a 
noiseless swagger, curling their mustaches? And dearest 
Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm ; and Tittlebat Titmouse, 
with his hair dyed green ; and all the Crummies company of 



2o8 - ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

comedians, with tlie Gil Bias troop ; and Sir Roger de Coverley ; 
and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La 
Mancha, with his blessed squire ? I say to you, I look rather 
wistfully towards the window, musing upon these people. Were 
any of them to enter, I think I should not be very much 
frightened. Dear old friends, what pleasant hours I have had 
with them ! We do not see each other very often, but when we 
do, we are ever happy to meet. I had a capital half-hour with 
Jacob Faithful last night ; when the last sheet was corrected, 
when " Finis " had been written, and the printer's boy, with the 
copy, was safe in Green Arbor Court. 

So you are gone, little printer's boy, with the last scratches 
and corrections on the proof, and a fine flourish by way of Finis 
at the story's end. The last corrections ? I say those last cor- 
rections seem never to be finished. A plague upon the weeds ! 
Every day, when I walk in my own little literary garden-plot, I 
spy some, and should like to have a spade, and root them out. 
Those idle words, neighbor, are past remedy. That turning 
back to the old pages produces anything but elation of mind. 
Would you not pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel some of 
them ? Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages ! Oh, the 
cares, the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conver- 
sations over and over again ! But now and again a kind thought 
is recalled, and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few 
chapters more, and then the last : after which, behold Finis 
itself come to an end, and the Infinite begun. 



ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 



As some bells in a church hard by are making a great holi- 
day clanging in the summer afternoon, I am reminded some- 
how of a July day, a garden, and a great clanging of bells years 
and years ago, on the very day when George IV, was crowned. 
I remember a little boy lying in that garden reading his first 
novel. It was called the " Scottish Chiefs." The little boy 
(who is now ancient and not little) read this book in the summer- 
house of his great-grandmamma. She was eighty years of age 
then. A most lovely and picturesque old lady, with a long tor- 
toise-shell cane, with a little pufif, or tour, of snow-white (or was 
it powdered ?) hair under her cap, with the prettiest little black 



ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 



209 



velvet slippers and high heels you ever saw. She had a grand- 
son, a lieutenant in the navy ; son of her son, a captain in the 
navy ; grandson of her husband, a captain in the navy. She 
lived for scores and scores of years in a dear little old Hamp- 
shire town inhabited by the wives, widows, daughters of navy 
captains, admirals, lieutenants. Dear me ! Don't I remember 
Mrs. Duval, widow of Admiral Duval ; and the Miss Dennets, 
at the Great House at the other end of the town, Admiral 
Dennet's daughters ; and the Miss Barrys, the late Captain 
Barry's daughters ; and the good old Miss Maskews, Admiral 
Maskews' daughter ; and that dear little Miss Norval, and the 
kind Miss Bookers, one of whom married Captain, now Ad- 
miral, Sir Henry Excellent, K. C. B. ? Far, far away into the 
past I look and see the little town with its friendly glimmer. 
That town was so like a novel of Miss Austen's that I wonder 
was she born and bred there ? No, we should have known, and 
the good old ladies would have pronounced her to be a little 
idle thing, occupied with her silly books and neglecting her 
housekeeping. There were other towns in England, no doubt, 
where dwelt the widows and wives of other navy captains ; 
where they tattled, loved each other, and quarrelled ; talked 
about Betty the maid, and her fine ribbons indeed ! took their 
dish of tea at six, played at quadrille every night till ten, when 
there was a little bit of supper, after which Betty came with the 
lanthorn ; and next day came, and next, and next, and so forth, 
until a day arrived when the lanthorn was out, when Betty came 
no more : all that little company sank to rest under the daisies, 
whither some folks will presently follow them. How did they 
live to be so old, those good people ? Moi qui vous park, I 
perfectly recollect old Mr. Gilbert, who had been to sea with 
Captain Cook ; and Captain Cook, as you justly observe, dear 
Miss, quoting out of your " Mangnall's Questions," was mur- 
dered by the natives of Owhyhee, anno 1779. ■^^"' ' don't you 
remember his picture, standing on the sea-shore, in tights and 
gaiters, with a musket in his hand, pointing to his people not to 
fire from the boats, whilst a great tattooed savage is going to 
stab him in the back ? Don't you remember those houris dan- 
cing before him and the other officers at the great Otaheite ball ? 
Don't you know that Cook was at the siege of Quebec, with the 
glorious Wolfe, who fought under the Duke of Cumberland, 
whose royal father was a distinguished officer at Ramillies, 
before he commanded in chief at Dettingen ? Huzza ! Give it 
them, my lads ! My horse is down ? Then I know I shall not 
run away. Do the French run ? then I die content. Stop, 

14 



2 1 o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Wo ! Quo me rapis ? My Pegasus is galloping off, goodness 
knows where, like his majesty's charger at Dettingen. 

How do these rich historical and personal reminiscences 
come out of the subject at present in hand ? What is that sub- 
ject, by the way ? My dear friend, if you look at the last essay- 
kin (though you may leave it alone, and I shall not be in the 
least surprised or offended), if you look at the last paper, where 
the writer imagines Athos and Porthos, Dalgetty and Ivanhoe, 
Amelia and Sir Chailes Grandison, Don Quixote and Sir 
Roger, walking in at the garden-window, you will at once per- 
ceive that Novels and their heroes and heroines are our pres- 
ent subject of discourse, into which we will presently plunge. 
Are you one of us, dear sir, and do you love novel-reading ? 
To be reminded of your first novel will surely be a pleasure to 
you. Hush ! I never read quite to the end of my first, the 
" Scottish Chiefs." I couldn't. I peeped in an alarmed furtive 
manner at some of the closing pages. Miss Porter, like a kind 
dear tender-hearted creature, would not have Wallace's head 
chopped off at the end of Vol. V. She made him die in prison,* 
and if I remember right (protesting I have not read the book 
for forty-two or three years), Robert Bruce made a speech to 
his soldiers, in which he said, " And Bannockburn shall equal 
Cambuskenneth." t But I repeat, I could not read the end of 
the fifth volume of that dear delightful book for crv-ing. Good 
heavens ! It was as sad, as sad as going back to school. 

The glorious Scott cycle of romances came to me some four 
or five years afterwards ; and I think boys of our year were 
specially fortunate in coming upon those delightful books at 
that special time when we could best enjoy them. Oh, that 
sunshiny bench on half-holidays, with Claverhouse or Ivanhoe 
for a companion ! I have remarked of very late days some 
little men in a great state of delectation over the romances of 
Captain Mayne Reid, and Gustave Aimard's Prairie and Indian 
Stories, and during occasional holiday visits, lurking off to bed 

• I find, on reference to the novel, that Sir William died on the scaffold, not in prison. 
His last words were, " ' My prayer is heard. Life's cord is cut by heaven. Helen t 

Helen! May heaven preserve my country, and ' He stopped. He felL And with 

that mighty shock the scaffold shook to its foundation." 

t The remark of Bruce (which I protest I had not read for forty-two years), I find to be 
as follows : — "When this was uttered by the English heralds, Bruce turned to Ruthven, 
with an heroic smile, ' Let him come, my brave barons ! and he shall find that Bannockburn 
shall page with Cambuskenneth?'" In the same amiable author's famous novel of 
•' Thaddeus of Warsaw," there is more crying than in any novel 1 ever remember to have 
read. See, for example, the last page ♦ * * " Incapable of speaking, Thaddeus led his 
wife back to her carriage. » » • His fears gushed out in spite of himself, and mingling 
with hers, poured those thanks, those assurances, of animated approbation through her 
heart, which made it even ache with excess of happiness." * * • And a sentence or two 
•further, " Kosciusko did bless him, and embalmed the benediction with a shower of tears." 



ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 



311 



with the volume under their arms. But are those Indians and 
warriors so terrible as our Indians and warriors were ? (I say, 
are they ? Young gentlemen, mind, I do not say they are not.) 
But as an oldster I can be heartily thankful for the novels of 
the i-io Geo. IV., let us say, and so downward to a period not 
unremote. Let us see ; there is, first, our dear Scott. Whom 
do I love in the works of that dear old master? Amo — 

The Baron of Bradwardine, and Fergus. (Captain Waver- 
ley is certainly very mild.) 

Amo Ivanhoe ; LOCKSLEY ; the Templar. 

Amo Quentin Durward, and specially Quentin's uncle, who 
brought the Boar to bay. I forget the gentleman's name. 

I have never cared for the Master of Ravenswood, or 
fetched his hat out of the water since he dropped it there when 
I last met him (circa 1825). 

Amo Saladin and the Scotch knight in the "Talisman." 
The Sultan best. 

Amo Claverhouse. 

Amo Major Dalgettv. Delightful Major. To think of 
him is to desire to jump up, run to the book, and get the 
volume down from the shelf. About all those heroes of Scott, 
what a manly bloom there is, and honorable modesty ! They 
are not at all heroic. They seem to blush somehow in their 
position of hero, and as it were to say, " Since it must be done, 
here goes ! " They are handsome, modest, upright, simple, 
courageous, not too clever. If I were a mother (which is 
absurd), I should like to be mother-in-law to several young 
men of the Walter-Scott-hero sort. 

Much as I like those most unassuming, manly, unpretend- 
ing gentlemen, I have to own that I think the heroes of an- 
other writer, viz : — 

Leather-stocking, 

Uncas, 

Hardheart, 

Tom Coffin, 
are quite the equals of Scott's men ; perhaps 1 weather-stocking 
is better than any one in " Scott's lot." La Longue Carabine 
is one of the great prize-men of fiction. He ranks with your 
Uncle Toby, Sir Roger de Coverley, Falstaff — heroic figures, 
all — American or British, and the artist has deserved well of 
his country who devised them. 

At school, in my time, there was public day, when the boys' 
relatives, an examining bigwig or two from the universities, old 
school-fellows, and so forth, came to the place. The boys wer« 



JSI2 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

all paraded ; prizes were administered ; each lad being in a 
new suit of clotlies — and magnificent dandies, I promise you, 
some of us were. Oh, the chubby cheeks, clean collars, glossy 
new raiment, beaming faces, glorious in youth— ^/f/ tueri cculutn 
— bright with truth, and mirth, and honor ! To see a hundred 
boys marshalled in a chapel or old hall ; to hear their sweet 
fresh voices when they chant, and look in their brave calm 
faces ; I say, does not the sight and sound of them smite you, 
somehow, with a pang of exquisite kindness ? * * * Well. 
As about boys, so about Novelists. I fancy the boys of Par- 
nassus School all paraded. I am a lower boy myself in that 
academy. I like our fellows to look well, upright, gentleman- 
like. There is Master Fielding — he with the black eye. What 
a magnificent build of a boy ! There is Master Scott, one of 
the heads of the school. Did you ever see the fellow more 
hearty and manly ? Yonder lean, shambUng, cadaverous lad, 
who is always borrowing money, telling lies, leering after the 
housemaids, is Master Laurence Sterne — a bishop's grandson, 
and himself intended for the Church ; for shame, you little 
reprobate ! But what a genius the fellow has ! Let him have 
a sound flogging, and as soon as the young scamp is out of the 
whipping-room give him a gold medal. Such would be my 
practice if I were Doctor Birch, and master of the school. 

Let us drop this school metaphor, this birch and all per- 
taining thereto. Our subject, I beg leave to remind the 
reader's humble servant, is novel heroes and heroines. How 
do you like your heroes, ladies ? Gentlemen, what novel 
heroines do you prefer ? When I set this essay going, I sent 
the above question to two of the most inveterate novel-readers 
of my acquaintance. The gentleman refers me to Miss Aus- 
ten ; the lady says Athos, Guy Livingston, and (pardon my. 
rosy blushes) Colonel Esmond, and owns that in youth she 
was very much in love with Valancourt. 

" Valancourt ? and who was he ? " cry the young people. 
Valancourt, my dears, was the hero of one of the most famous 
romances which ever was published in this country. The 
beauty and elegance of Valancourt made your young grand- 
mammas' gentle hearts to beat with respectful sympathy. He 
and his glory have passed away. Ah, woe is me that the glory 
of novels should ever decay ; that dust should gather round 
them on the shelves ; that the annual checks from Messieurs 
the publishers should dwindle, dwindle ! Inquire at Mudie's, 
or the London Librar}', who asks for the " Mysteries of 
Udolpho " now ? Have not even the " Mysteries of Paris " 



ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 



213 



ceased to frighten ? Alas, our novels are but for a season ; 
and I know characters whom a painful modesty forbids me to 
mention, who shall go to limbo along with " Valancourt " and 
" Doricourt " and " Thaddeus of Warsaw." 

A dear old sentimental friend, with whom I discoursed 
on the subject of novels yesterday, said that her favorite hero 
was Lord Orville, in " Evelina," that novel which Doctor John- 
son loved so. I took down the book from a dusty old crypt at 
a club, where Mrs. Barbauld's novelists repose : and this is the 
kind of thing, ladies and gentlemen, in which your ancestors 
found pleasure : — 

"And here, whilst I was looking for the books, I was fol- 
lowed by Lord Orville. He shut the door after he came in, 
and, approaching me with a look of anxiety, said, ' Is this true, 
Miss Anville — are you going ? ' 

" ' I believe so, my lord,' said I, still looking for the books. 

" ' So suddenly, so unexpectedly : must I lose you ? ' 

" ' No great loss, my lord,' said I, endeavoring to speak 
cheerfully. 

" ' Is it possible,' said he, gravely, ' Miss Anville can doubt 
my sincerity ? ' 

" ' I can't imagine,' cried I, ' what Mrs. Selwyn has done 
with those books.' 

" ' Would to heaven,' continued he, ' I might flatter myself 
you would allow me to prove it ! ' 

" ' I must run up stairs,' cried I, greatly confused, ' and ask 
what she has done with them.' 

" ' You are going then,' cried he, taking my hand, * and you 
give me not the smallest hope of any return ! Will vou not, 
my too lovely friend, will you not teach me, with fortitude like 
your own, to support your absence ? ' 

" ' My lord,' cried I, endeavoring to disengage my hand, 
' pray let me go ! ' 

" ' I will,' cried he, to my inexpressible confusion, dropping 
on one knee, 'if you wish me to leave you.' 

" ' Oh, my lord,' exclaimed I, 'rise, I beseech you; rise. 
Surely your lordship is not so cruel as to mock me.' 

"'Mock you!' repeated he earnestly, ' no, I revere you. 
I esteem and admire you above all human beings ! You are 
the friend to whom my soul is attached, as to its better half. 
You are the most amiable, the most perfect of women ; and 
you are dearer to me than language has the power of telling.' 

" I attempt not to describe my sensations at that moment ; 
I scarce breathed ; I doubted if I existed ; the blood forsook 



214 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



my cheeks, and my feet refused to sustain me. Lord Orville 
hastily rising supported me to a chair upon which I sanlc al- 
most lifeless. 

" I cannot write the scene that followed, though every word 
is engraven on my heart ; but his protestations, his expressions, 
were too flattering for repetition ; nor would he, in spite of my 
repeated efforts to leave him, suffer me to escape ; in short, my 
dear sir, I was not proof against his solicitations, and he drew 
from me the most sacred secret of my heart ! " * 

Other people may not much like this extract, madam, from 
your favorite novel, but when you come to read it, you will like 
it. I suspect that when you read that book which you so love, 
you read it a deiik. Did you not yourself pass a winter at 
Bath, when you were the belle of the assembly ? Was there 
not a Lord Orville in your case too ? As you think of him 
eleven lustres pass away. You look at him with the bright 
eyes of those days, and your hero stands before you, the brave, 
the accomplished, the simple, the true gentleman ; and he 
makes the most elegant of bows to one of the most beautiful 
young women the world ever saw ; and he leads you out to the 
cotillon, to the dear unforgotten music. Hark to the horns of 
Elfand, blowing, blowing ! Bo/me vieille, you remember their 
melody, and your heart-strings thrill with it still. 

Of your heroic heroes, I think our friend Monseigneur 
Athos, Count de la Fere, is my favorite. I have read about 
him from sunrise to sunset with the utmost contentment of 
mind. He has passed through how many volumes .-• Forty? 
Fifty ? I wish for my part there was a hundred more, and 
would never tire of him rescuing prisoners, punishing rufiians, 
and running scoundrels through the midriff with his most grace- 

* Contrast this old perfumed, powdered D'Arblay conversation with the present modera 
talk. If the two young people wished to hide tlieir emotions nowadays, and express 
themselves in modest language, the story would run : — 

" Wliilst I was looking for the books, Lord Orviile came in. He looked uncommonljr 
down in the mouth, as he said : ' Is this true, Miss Anville ; are you going to cut ? ' 

" ' To absquatulate, Lord Orville,' said I, still pretending that 1 was looking for tho 
books. 

" ' You're very quick about it,' said he. 

" ' Guess it's no great loss,' I remarked, as cheerfully as I could. 

" ' You don't think I'm chafifing?' said Orville, with much emotion. 

" ' Wliat has Mrs. Selwyn done with the books ?' I went on. 

" ' What, going ? ' said he, ' and going lor good ? I wish I was such a good-plucked one 
as you, Miss Anville,' " &c. 

The conversation, you perceive, might be easily written down to this key ; and if the 
hero and heroine were modern, they would not be suffered to go through their dialogue on 
stilts, but would converse in the natural graceful way at present customary. By the way, 
what a strange custom that is in modern lady novelists to make the men bully the women ! In 
the time of Miss Porter and Madame D'Arblay, we have respect, profound bows and curt- 
seys, graceful courtesy, from men to women. In the time of Miss Bronte, absolute rudeness. 
Is it true, mesdames, that you like rudeness, and are pleased at being ill-used by men? I 
could point to more than one lady novelist who so represents you. • 



ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 



2IS 



ful rapier. Ah, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, you are a mag- 
nificent trio. I think I like d'Artagnan in his own memoirs 
best. I bought him years and years ago, price fivepence, in a 
little-parchment-covered Cologne-printed volume, at a stall in 
Gray's Inn Lane. Dumas glorifies him and makes a Marshal 
of him ; if I remember rightly, the original d'Artagnan was a 
needy adventurer, who died in exile very early in Louis XIV. 's 
reign. Did you ever read the "Chevalier d'Harmenthal ? " 
Did you ever read the " Tulipe Noire," as modest as a story by 
Miss Edgeworth t I think of the prodigal banquets to which 
this Lucullus of a man has invited me, with thanks and wonder. 
To what a series of splendid entertainments he has treated me ! 
VVhere does he find the money for these prodigious feasts ? 
They say that all the works bearing Dumas's name are not 
written by him. Well ? Does not the chief cook have aides 
under him .'' Did not Rubens's pupils paint on his canvases ? 
Had not Lawrence assistants for his backgrounds ? For my- 
self, being also du metier, I confess I would often like to have 
a competent, respectable, and rapid clerk for the business part 
of my novels ; and on his arrival, at eleven o'clock, would say, 
" Mr. Jones, if you please, the archbishop must die this morn- 
ing in about five pages. Turn to article ' Dropsy ' (or what 
you Avill) in Encyclopsedia. Take care there are no medical 
blunders in his death. Group his daughters, physicians, and 
chaplains round him. In Wales' ' London,' letter B, third shelf, 
you will find an account of Lambeth, and some prints of the 
place. Color in with local coloring. The daughter will come 
down, and speak to her lover in his wherry at Lambeth Stairs," 
&c., &c. Jones (an intelligent young man) examines the medi- 
cal, historical, topographical books necessary ; his chief points 
out to him in Jeremy Taylor (fob, London, m.dclv.) a few re- 
marks, such as might befit a dear old archbishop departing this 
life. When I come back to dress for dinner, the archbishojD is 
dead on my table in five pages ; medicine, topography, theology, 
all right, and Jones has gone home to his family some hours. Sir 
Christopher is the architect of St. Paul's. He has not laid the 
stones or carried up the mortar. There is a great deal of car- 
penter's and joiner's work in novels which surely a smart pro- 
fessional hand might supply. A smart professional hand ? I 
give you my word, there seem to me parts of novels — let us sa^ 
the love-making, the " business," the villain in the cupboard, 
and so forth, which I should like to order John Footman to 
take in hand, as I desire him to bring the coals and polish the 
boots. Ask me indeed to pop a robber under a bed, to hide a 



2l6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

will which shall be forthcoming in due season, or at my time 
of life to write a namby-pamby love conversation between Emily 
and Lord Arthur ! I feel ashamed of myself, and especially 
when my business obliges me to do the love-passages, I blush 
so, though quite alone in my study, that you would fancy I was 
going off in an apoplexy. Are authors affected by their own 
works ? I don't know about other gentlemen, but if I make a 
joke myself I cry ; if I write a pathetic scene I am laughing 
wildly all the time — at least Tomkins thinks so. You know I 
am such a cynic ! 

The editor of the Conihill Magazine (no soft and yielding 
character like his predecessor, but a man of stern resolution) 
will only allow these harmless papers to run to a certain length. 
But for this veto I should gladly have prattled over half a sheet 
more, and have discoursed on many heroes and heroines of 
novels whom fond memory brings back to me. Of these books 
I have been a diligent student from those early days, which are 
recorded at the commencement of this little essay. Oh, de- 
lightful novels, well remembered ! Oh, novels, sweet and deli- 
cious as the raspberry open-tarts of budding boyhood ! Do I 
forget one night after prayers (when we under-boys were sent 
to bed) lingering at my cupboard to read one little half page 
more of my dear Walter Scott — and down came the monitor's 
dictionary upon my head ! Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of 
York, I have loved thee faithfully for forty years ! Thou wert 
twenty years old (say) and I but twelve, when I knew thee. 
At sixty odd, love, most of the ladies of thy Orient race have 
lost the bloom of youth, and bulged beyond the line of beauty ; 
but to me thou art ever young and fair, and I will do battle 
with any felon Templar who assails thy fair name. 



ON A PEAR-TREE. 



A GRACIOUS reader no doubt has remarked that these humble 
sermons have for subjects some little event Avhich happens at 
the preacher's own gate, or which falls under his peculiar 
cognizance. Once, you may remember, we discoursed about a 
chalk-mark on the door. This morning Betsy, the housemaid, 
comes with a frightened look, and says, " Law, mum ! there's 



ON A PEAR-TREE. 217 

three bricks taken out of the garden wall, and the branches 
broke, and all the pears taken off the pear-tree ! " Poor peace- 
ful suburban pear-tree ! Jail-birds have hopped about thy 
branches, and robbed them of their smoky fruit. But those 
bricks removed ; that ladder evidently prepared, by which un- 
known marauders may enter and depart from my little English- 
man's castle; is not this a subject of thrilling interest, and may 
it not he continued in a future number'^ — that is the terrible ques- 
tion. Suppose, having escaladed the outer wall, the miscreants 
take a fancy to storm the castle ? Well — well ! we are armed ; 
we are numerous ; we are men of tremendous courage, who 
will defend our spoons with our lives ; and there are barracks 
close by (thank goodness !) whence, at the noise of our shouts 
and firing, at least a thousand bayonets will bristle to our 
rescue. 

What sound is yonder ! A church bell. I might go myself, 
but how listen to the sermon ? I am thinking of those thieves 
who have made a ladder of my wall, and a prey of my pear- 
tree. They may be walking to church at this moment, neatly 
shaved, in clean linen, with every outward appearance of virtue. 
If I went, I know I should be watching the congregation, and 
thinking, " Is that one of the fellows who came over my wall } " 
If, after the reading of the eighth Commandment, a man sang 
out with particular energy, " Incline our hearts to keep this 
law," I should think, "Aha, Master Basso, did you have pears 
for breakfast this morning .? " Crime is walking round me, 
that is clear. Who is the perpetrator? * * * What a 
changed aspect the world has, since these last few lines were 
written ! I have been walking round about my premises, and 
in consultation with a gentleman in a single-breasted blue coat, 
with pewter buttons, and a tape ornament on the collar. He 
has looked at the holes in the wall, and the amputated tree. 
We have formed our plan of ^fd^nz^— perhaps of attack. Per- 
haps some day you may read in the papers " Daring Attempt 
AT Burglary — Heroic Victory over the Villains," &c., &c. 
Rascals as yet unknown ! perhaps you, too, may read these 
words, and may be induced to pause in your fatal intention. 
Take the advice of a sincere friend, and keep off. To find a 
man writhing in my man-trap, another mayhap impaled in my 
ditch, to pick off another from my tree (scoundrel ! as though 
he were a pear) will give me no pleasure ; but such things may 
happen. Be warned in time, villains ! Or, if you must pursue 
your calling as cracksmen, have the goodness to try some other 
shutters. Enough ! subside into your darkness, children of 



2l8 ^ ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

night ! Thieves ! we seek not to \\2lVQ. you hanged — you are but 
as pegs whereon to hang others, 

I may have said before, that if I were going to be hanged 
myself, I think I should take an accurate note of my sensa- 
tions, request to stop at some public-house on the road to Ty- 
burn, and be provided with a private room and writing-m.aterials, 
and give an account of my state of mind. Then, gee up, car- 
ter ! I beg your reverence to continue your apposite, though 
not novel, remarks on my situation ; — and so we drive up to 
Tyburn turnpike, where an expectant crowd, the obliging sher- 
iffs, and the dexterous and rapid Mr. Ketch are already in 
waiting. 

A number of laboring people are sauntering about our 
streets and taking their rest on this holiday — fellows who have 
no more stolen my pears than they have robbed the crown 
jewels out of the Tower — and I say I cannot help think- 
ing in my own mind, " Are you the rascal who got over 
my wall last night?" Is the suspicion haunting my mind 
written on my countenance .'' I trust not. What if one man 
after another were to come up to me and say, " How dare you, 
sir, suspect me in your mind of stealing your fruit .'' Go be 
hanged, you and your jargonels ! " You rascal thief ! it is not 
merely three-halfp'orth of sooty fruit you rob me of, it is my 
peace of mind — my artless innocence and trust in my fellow- 
creatures, my childlike belief that everything they say is true. 
How can I hold out the hand of friendship in this condition, 
when my first impression is, " My good sir, I strongly suspect 
that you were up my pear-tree last night ? " It is a dreadful 
state of mind. The core is black ; the death-stricken fruit 
drops on the bough, and a great worm is within — fattening, 
and feasting, and wriggling ! Who stole the pears ? I say. 
Is it you, brother ? Is it you, madam ? Come ! are you ready 
to answer — respondere parati et caniare pares ? (O shame ! 
shame !) 

Will the villains ever be discovered and punished who stole 
my fruit .^ Some unlucky rascals who rob orchards are caught 
up the tree at once. Some rob through life with impunity. If 
I, for my part, were to try and get up the smallest tree, on the 
darkest night, in the most remote orchard, I wager any money 
I should be found out — be caught by the leg in a man-trap, or 
have Towler fastening on me. I always am found out ! 
have been ; shall be. It's my luck. Other men will carry off 
bushels of fruit, and get away undetected, unsuspected ; where- 
as I know woe and punishment would fall upon me were I to 



ON A PEAR-TREE. 



219 



lay my hand on the smallest pippin. So be it. A man who 
has this precious self-knowledge will surely keep his hands 
from picking and stealing, and his feet upon the paths of 
virtue. 

I will assume, my benevolent friend and present reader, that 
you yourself are virtuous, not from a fear of punishment, but 
from a sheer love of good : but as you and I walk through 
life, consider what hundreds of thousands of rascals we 
must have met, who have not been found out at all. In 
high places and low, in Clubs and on 'Change, at church 
or the balls and routs of the nobility and gentry, how 
dreadful it is for benevolent beings like you and me to 
have to think these undiscovered though not unsuspected 
scoundrels are swarming ! What is the difference between you 
and a galley-slave ? Is yonder poor wretch at the hulks not a 
man and a brother too ? Have you ever forged, my dear sir ? 
Have you ever cheated your neighbor? Have you ever ridden 
to Hounslow Heath and robbed the mail.'' Have you ever 
entered a first-class railway-carriage, where an old gentleman 
sat alone in a sweet sleep, daintily murdered him, taken his 
pocket-book, and got out at the next station ? You know that 
this circumstance occurred in France a few months since. If 
we have travelled in France this autumn we may have met the 
ingenious gentleman who perpetrated this daring and successful 
coup. We may have found him a well-informed and agreeable 
man. I have been acquainted with two or three gentlemen 
who have been discovered after — after the performance of ille- 
gal actions. What ? That agreeable rattling fellow we met 
was the celebrated Mr. John Sheppard ? Was that amiable 
quiet gentleman in spectacles the well-known Mr, Fauntleroy ? 
In Hazlitt's admirable paper, " Going to a Fight," he de- 
scribes a dashing sporting fellow who was in the coach, and who 
was no less a man than the eminent destroyer of Mr. William 
Weare. Don't tell me that you would not like to have met (out of 
business) Captain Sheppard, the Reverend Doctor Dodd, or 
others rendered famous by their actions and misfortunes, by 
their lives and their deaths. They are the subjects of bal- 
lads, the heroes of romance. A friend of mine had the house 
in May Fair, out of which poor Doctor Dodd was taken hand- 
cuffed. There was the paved hall over which he stepped. 
That little room at the side was, no doubt, the study where 
he composed his elegant sermons. Two years since I had 
the good fortune to partake of some admirable dinners 
in Tyburnia — magnificent dinners indeed ; but rendered 



J20 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

doubly interesting from the fact that the house was that oc- 
cupied by the late Mr. Sadleir. One night the late Mr. Sad- 
leir took tea in that dining-room, and, to the surprise of his 
butler, went out, having put into his pocket his own cream-jug. 
The next morning, you know, he was found dead on Hamp- 
stead Heath, with the creamjug lying Ijy him, into which he 
poured the poison by which he died. The idea of the ghost of 
the late gentleman flitting about the room gave a strange interest 
to the banquet. Can you fancy him taking his tea alone in the 
dining-room t He empties that cream-jug and puts it in his 
pocket ; and then he opens yonder door, through which he is 
never to pass again. Now he crosses the hall : and hark! the 
hall-door shuts upon him, and his steps die away. They are gone 
into the night. They traverse the sleeping city. They lead him 
into the fields, where the gray morning is beginning to glim- 
mer. He pours something from a bottle into a little silver jug. 
It touches jiis lips, the lying lips. Do they quiver a prayer ere 
that- awful draught is swallowed ? When the sun rises they 
are dumb. 

I neither knew this unhappy man, nor his countryman — 
Laertes let us call him — who is at present in exile, having been 
compelled to fly from remorseless creditors. Laertes fled to 
America, where he earned his bread by his pen. I own to 
having a kindly feeling towards this scapegrace, because, though 
an exile, he did not abuse the country whence he fled, I have 
heard tliat he went away taking no spoil with him, penniless 
almost ; and on his voyage he made acquaintance with a cer- 
tain Jew ; and when he fell sick, at New York, this Jew be- 
friended him, and gave him help and money out of his own 
store, which was but small. Now, after they had been awhile 
in the strange city, it happened that the poor Jew spent all his 
little money, and he too fell ill, and was in great penury. And 
now it was Laertes who befriended that Ebrew Jew. He fee'd 
doctors ; he fed and tended the sick and hungry. Go to, 
Laertes ! I know thee not. It may be thou art justly exul 
i>atrice. But the Jew shall intercede for thee, thou not, let us 
trust, hopeless Christian sinner. 

Another exile to the same shore I knew : who did not ? 
Julius Cffisar hardly owed more money than Cucedicus : and, 
gracious powers ! Cucedicus, how did you manage to spend 
and owe so much ? All day he was at work for his clients ; at 
night he was occupied in the Public Council. He neither had 
wife nor children. The rewards which he received for his 
orations were enough to maintain twenty rhetoricians. Night 



ON A PEAR-TREE. 221 

after night I have seen him eating his frugal meal, consisting 
but of a fish, a small portion of mutton, and a small measure 
of Iberian or Trinacrian wine, largely diluted with the sparkling 
waters of Rhenish Gaul. And this was all he had ; and this 
man earned and paid away talents upon talents ; and fled, 
owing who knows how many more ! Does a man earn fifteen 
thousand pounds a year, toiling by day, talking by night, having 
horrible unrest in his bed, ghastly terrors at waking, seeing an 
officer lurking at every corner, a sword of justice for ever hang- 
ing over his head — and have for his sole diversion a newsj^aper, 
a lonely mutton-chop, and a little sherry and seltzer-water ? 
In the German stories we i^ead how men sell themselves to — a 
certain Personage, and that Personage cheats them. He gives 
them wealth ; yes, but the gold pieces turn into worthless leaves. 
He sets them before splendid banquets ; yes, but what an awful 
grin that black footman has who lifts up the dish-cover ; and 
don't you smell a peculiar sulphurous odor in the dish ? Faugh ! 
take it away ; I can't eat. He promises them splendors and 
triumphs. The conqueror's car rolls glittering through the 
city, the multitude shout and huzza. Drive on, coachman. 
Yes, but who is that hanging on behind the carriage } Is this 
the reward of eloquence, talents, industry ? Is this the end of 
a life's labor.' Don't you remember how, when the dragon 
was infesting the neighloorhood of Babylon, the citizens used 
to walk dismally out of evenings, and look at the valleys round 
about strewed with the bones of the victims whom the monster 
had devoured ? O insatiate brute, and most disgusting, brazen, 
and scaly reptile ! Let us be thankful, children, that it has not 
gobbled us up too. Quick. Let us turn away, and pray 
that we may be kept out of the reach of his horrible maw, jaw, 
claw I 

When I first came up to London, as innocent as Monsieur 
Gil Bias, I also fell in with some pretty acquaintances, found 
my way into several caverns, and delivered my purse to more 
than one gallant gentleman of the road. One I remember 
especially — one who never eased me personally of a single 
maravedi — one than whom I never met a bandit more gallant, 
courteous, and amiable. Rob me ? Rolando feasted me ; 
treated me to his dinner and his wine ; kept a generous table 
for his friends, and I know was most liberal to many of them. 
How well I remember one of his speculations ! It was a great 
plan for smuggling tobacco. Revenue officers were to be bought 
off ; silent ships were to ply on the Thames ; cunning depots 
were to be established, and hundreds of thousands of pounds 



222 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

to be made by the coup. How his kind eyes kindled as he 
propounded the scheme to me ! How easy and certain it 
seemed ! It might have succeeded : I can't say: but the bold 
and merry, the hearty and kindly Rolando came to grief — a 
little matter of imitated signatures occasioned a Bank pros- 
ecution of Rolando the Brave. He walked about armed, and 
vowed he would never be taken alive : but taken he was ; tried, 
condemned, sentenced to perpetual banishment ; and I heard 
that for some time he was universally popular in the colony 
which had the honor to possess him. What a song he could 
sing ! 'Twas when the cup was sparkling before us, and heaven 
gave a portion of its blue, boys, blue, that I remember the song 
of Roland at the " Old Piazza Coffee-house." And now where 
is the "Old Piazza Coffee-house .'"' Where is Thebes ? where 
is Troy ? where is the Colossus of Rhodes 1 Ah, Rolando, 
Rolando ! thou wert a gallant captain, a cheery, a handsome, a 
merry. At me thou never presentedst pistol. Thou badest the 
bumper of Burgundy fill, fill for me, giving those who preferred 
it Champagne. Coeluvi non animtim, &c. Do you think he has 
reformed now that he has crossed the sea, and changed the air? 
I have my own opinion. Howbeit, Rolando, thou wert a most 
kind and hospitable bandit. And I love not to think of thee 
with a chain at thy shin. 

Do you know how all these memories of unfortunate men 
have come upon me ? When they came to frighten me this 
morning by speaking of my robbed pears, my perforated garden 
wall, I was reading an article in the Saturday Review about 
Rupilius. I have sat near that young man at a public dinner, 
and beheld him in a gilded uniform. But yesterday he lived in 
splendor, had long hair, a flowing beard, a jewel at his neck, 
and a smart surtout. So attired, he stood but yesterday in 
court ; and to-day he sits over a bowl of prison cocoa, with a 
shaved head, and in a felon's jerkin. 

That beard and head shaved, that gaudy deputy-lieutenant's 
coat exchanged for felon uniform, and your daily bottle of 
champagne for prison cocoa, my poor Rupilius, what a comfort 
it must be to have the business brought to an end ! Champagne 
was the honorable gentleman's drink in the House of Commons 
dining-room, as I am informed. What uncommonly dry cham- 
pagne that must have been ! When we saw him outwardly 
happy, how miserable he must have been ! when we thought 
him prosperous, how dismally poor ! When tha great Mr. 
Harker, at the public dinners called out — " Gentlemen, charge 
your glasses, and please silence for the Honorable Member 



DESSEJAT'S. 223 

for Lambeth ! " how that Honorable Member must have writhed 
inwardly ! One day, when tliere was a talk of a gentleman's 
honor being questioned, Rupilius said, " If any man doubted 
mine, I would knock him down." But that speech was in the 
way of business. The Spartan boy, who stole the fox, smiled 
while the beast was gnawing him under his cloak : I promise 
you Rupilius had some sharp fangs gnashing under his. We 
have sat at the same feast, I say : we have paid our contribution 
to the same charity. Ah ! when I ask this day for my daily 
bread, I pray not to be led into temptation and to be delivered 
from evil. 



DESSEIN'S. 

I ARRIVED by the night-mail packet from Dover, The passage 
had been rough, and the usual consequences had ensued. I was 
disinclined to travel farther that night on my road to Paris, and 
knew the Calais hotel of old as one of the cleanest, one of the 
dearest, one of the most comfortable hotels on the continent 
of Europe. There is no town more French than Calais. That 
charming old " Hotel Dessein," with its court, its gardens, its 
lordly kitchen, its princely waiter — a gentleman of the old 
school, who has welcomed the finest company in Europe — 
have long been known to me. I have read complaints in The 
Times, more than once, I think, that the Dessein bills are dear. 

A bottle of soda-water certainly costs well, never mind how 

much. I remember as a boy, at the " Ship " at Dover (im- 
perante Carolo Decimo), when, my place to London being 
paid, I had but 12s. left after a certain little Paris excursion 
(about which my benighted parents never knew anything), or- 
dering for dinner a whiting, a beefsteak, and a glass of negus, 
and the bill was, dinner 7^., glass of negus 2s., waiter 6d., and 
only half a crown left, as I was a sinner, for the guard and 
coachman on the way to London ! And I was a sinner. I 
had gone without leave. What a long, dreary, guilty forty 
hours' journey it was from Paris to Calais, I remember ! How 
did I come to think of this escapade, which occurred in the 
Easter vacation of the year 1830 ? I always think of it when 
I am crossing to Calais. Guilt, sir, remains stamped on the 
memory, and I feel easier in my mind now that it is liberated of 
this old peccadillo. I met my college tutor only yesterday. We 
were travelling, and stopped at the same hotel. He had the 



224 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



very next room to mine. After he had gone into his apart- 
ment, havinj^' shaken me quite kindly by the hand, I felt in- 
clined to knock at his door and say, " Doctor Bentley, I beg 
your pardon, but do you remember, when I was going clown at 
the Easter vacation in 1830, you asked me where I was going 
to spend my vacation ? And I said, With my friend Slingsby, 
in Huntingdonshire. Well, sir, I grieve to have to confess 
that I told you a fib. I had got 20/. and was going for a lark 
to Paris, where my friend Edwards was staying." There, it is 
out. The Doctor will read it, for I did not wake him up after 
all to make my confession, but protest he shall have a copy 
of this Roundabout sent to him when he returns to his lodge. 

They gave me a bedroom there ; a very neat room on the 
first floor, looking into the pretty garden. The hotel must look 
pretty much as it did a hundred years ago when Jie visited it. 
I wonder whether he paid his bill ? Yes : his journey was just 
begun. He had borrowed or got the money somehow. Such 
a man would spend it liberally enough when he had it, give 
generously — nay, drop a tear over the fate of the poor fellow 
whom he relieved. I don't believe a word he says, but I never 
accused him of stinginess about money. That is a fault of 
much more virtuous people than he. Mr. Laurence is ready 
enough with his purse when there are anybody's guineas in it. 
Still when I went to bed in the room, in his room ; when I 
think how I admire, dislike, and have abused him, a certain 
dim feeling of apprehension filled my mind at the midnight 
hour. What if I should see his lean figure in the blacksatin 
breeches, his sinister smile, his long thin finger pointing to me 
in the moonlight (for I am in bed, and have popped my candle 
out), and he should say, " You mistrust me, you hate me, do 
you ? And you, don't you know how Jack, Tom, and Harry, 
your brother authors, hate yon 1 " I grin and laugh in the 
moonlight, in the midnight, in the silence. " O you ghost in 
blacksatin breeches and a wig ! I like to be hated by some 
men," I say, " I know men whose lives are a scheme, whose 
laughter is a conspiracy, whose smile means something else, 
whose hatred is a cloak, and I had rather these men should 
hate me than not," 

" My good sir," says he, with a ghastly grin on his lean- 
face, " you have your wish," 

" Aj>res ? " I say. " Please let me go to sleep, I sha'n't 
sleep any the worse because " 

" Because there are insects in the bed, and they sting you ? " 
(This is only by way of illustration, my good sir ; the animals 



D ESSE IN' S. 



225 



don't bite me now. All the house at present seems to me ex- 
cellently clean.) " 'Tis absurd to affect this indifference. If 
you are thin-skinned, and the reptiles bite, they keep you from 
sleep." 

" There are some men who cry out at a flea-bite as loud as 
if they were torn by a vulture," I growl. 

" Men of the genus irritabile, my worthy good gentleman I 
— and you are one." 

" Yes, sir, I am of the profession, as you say ; and I dare 
say make a great shouting and crying at a small hurt." 

" You are ashamed of that quality by which you earn your 
subsistence, and such reputation as you have .■' Your sensibil- 
ity is your livelihood, my worthy friend. You feel a pang of 
pleasure or pain ? It is noted in your memory, and some day 
or other makes its appearance in your manuscript. Wh}^, in 
your last Roundabout rubbish you mention reading your first 
novel on the day when King George IV. was crowned. I re- 
member him in his cradle at St. James's, a lovely little babe ; 
a gilt Chinese railing was before him, and I dropped the tear 
of sensibility as I gazed on the sleeping cherub." 

"A tear — a fiddlestick, Mr. Sterne," I growled out, for of 
course I knew my friend in the wig and satin breeches to be 
no other than the notorious, nay, celebrated Mr. Laurence 
Sterne. 

" Does not the sight of a beautiful infant charm and melt 
you, mon ami ? If not, I pity you. Yes, he was beautiful. I 
was in London the year he was born. I used to breakfast at 
the ' Mount Coffee-house.' I did not become the fashion until 
two years later, when my ' Tristram ' made his appearance, 
who has held his own for a hundred years. By the way, mon 
bon monsieur, how many authors of your present time will last 
till the next century .? Do you think Brown will ? " 

I laughed with scorn as I lay in my bed (and so did the 
ghost give a ghastly snigger). 

" Brown ! " I roared. " One of the most overrated men 
that ever put pen to paper ! " 

" What do you think of Jones ? " 

I grew indignant with this old cynic. " As a reasonable 
ghost, come out of the other world, you don't mean," I said, *' to 
ask me a serious opinion of Mr. Jones ? His books may b6 
very good reading for maid-servants and school-boys, but you 
don't ask me to read them ? As a scholar yourself you must 
know that " 

"Well, then, Robinson?" 

15 



2 2 6 J^O UNDA BOUT PA PERS. 

" Robinson, I am told, has merit. I dare say ; I nevei 
have been able to read his books, and can't, therefore, form any 
opinion about Mr. Robinson. At least you will allow that I 
am not speaking in a prejudiced manner about hif?t." 

" Ah ! I see you men of letters have your cabals and 
jealousies, as we had in my time. There was an Irish fellow 
by the name of Gouldsmith, v/ho used to abuse me ; but he 
went into no genteel company — and faith ! it mattered little, his 
praise or abuse. I never was more surprised than when I heard 
that Mr. Irving, an American gentleman of parts and elegance, 
had wrote the fellow's life. To make a hero of that man, my 
dear sir, 'twas ridiculous ! You followed in the fashion, I hear, 
and chose to lay a wreath before this queer little idol. Pre- 
posterous ! A pretty writer, who has turned some neat couplets. 
Bah ! I have no patience with Master Posterity, that has 
choseii to take up this fellow, and make a hero of him ! And 
there was another gentleman of my time, Mr. Thiefcatcher 
Fielding, forsooth ! a fellow with the strength, and the tastes, 
and the manners of a porter ! What madness has possessed 
you all to bow before that Calvert Butt of a man ? — a creature 
without elegance or sensibility ! The dog had spirits, certainly. 
I remember my Lord Bathurst praising them : but as for read- 
ing his books — ma/oi, I would as lief go and dive for tripe in 
a cellar. The man's vulgarity stifles me. He wafts me whiffs 
of gin. Tobacco and onions are in his great coarse laugh, 
which choke xw&, pardi ; and I don't think much better of the 
other fellow — the Scots' gallipot purveyor — Peregrine Clinker, 
Humphrey Random — how did the fellow call his rubbish.!" 
Neither of these men had the bcl air, the ban ton, the je nc sais 
quoi. Pah ! If I meet them in my walks by our Stygian river, 
I give them a wide berth, as that hybrid apothecary fellow would 
say. An ounce of civet, good apothecary ; horrible, horrible ! 
The mere thought of the coarseness of those men gives me the 
chair de poulc. Mr. Fielding, especially, has no more sensi- 
bility than a butcher in Fleet Market. He takes his heroes 
out of alehouse kitchens, or worse places still. And this is the 
person whom Posterity has chosen to honor along with me — 
me ! Faith, Monsieur Posterity, you have put me in pretty com- 
pany, and I see you are no wiser than we were in our time. 
Mr. Fielding, forsooth ! Mr. Tripe and Onions ! Mr. Cow- 
heel and Gin ! Thank you for nothing. Monsieur Posterity ! " 

" And so," thought I, " even among these Stygians this envy 
and quarrelsomeness (if you will permit me the word) survive ? 
What a pitiful meanness ! To be sure, I can understand this 



D ESSE IN 'S. 



227 



feeling to a certain extent ; a sense of justice will prompt it. 
In my own case, I often feel myself forced to protest against 
the absurd praises lavished on contemporaries. Yesterday, for 
instance. Lady Jones was good enough to praise one of my 
works. IVes hien. But in the very next minute she began, 
with quite as great enthusiasm, to praise Miss Hobson's last 
romance. My good creature, what is that woman's praise worth 
who absolutely admires the writings of Miss Hobson ? I offer 
a friend a bottle of '44 claret, fit for a pontifical supper. ' This 
is capital wine,' says he ; ' and now we have finished the bottle, 
will you give me a bottle of that ordinaire we drank the other 
day .'' ' Very well, my good man. You are a good judge — of or- 
dinaire, I daresay. Nothing so provokes my anger, and rouses 
my sense of justice, as to hear other men undeservedly praised. 
In a word, if you wish to remain friends with me, don't praise 
anybody. You tell me that the Venus de' Medici is beautiful, 
or Jacob Omnium is tall. Qice diablc I Can't I judge for my- 
self ? Haven't I eyes and a foot-rule ? I don't think the Venus 
is so handsome, since you press me. She is pretty, but she has 
no expression. And as for Mr. Omnium, I can see much taller 
men in a fair for twopence." 

"And so," I said, turning round to Mr. Sterne, "you are 
actually jealous of Mr. Fielding ? O you men of letters, you 
men of letters ! Is not the world (your world, I mean) big 
enough for all of you ? " 

I often travel in my sleep. I often of a night find myself 
walking in my night-gown about the gray streets. It is awk- 
ward at first, but somehow nobody makes any remark. I glide 
along over the ground with my naked feet. The mud does not 
wet them. The passers-by do not tread on them. I am wafted 
over the ground, down the stairs, through the doors. This sort 
of travelling, dear friends, I am sure you have all of you in- 
dulged. 

Well, on the night in question (and, if you wish to know the 
precise date, it was the 31st of September last), after having 
some little conversation with Mr. Sterne in our bedroom, I 
must have got up, though I protest I don't know how, and come 
down stairs with him into the coffee-room of the " Hotel Des- 
sein," where the moon was shining, and a cold supper was laid 
out. I forget what we had — " vol-au-vent d'oeufs de Phenix — 
agneau aux pistaches a la Barmecide," — what matters what we 
had? 

" As regards supper this is certain, the less you have of it 
the better." 



228 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

That is what one of the guests remarked, — a shabby old 
man, in a wig, and such a dirty, ragged, disreputable dressing- 
gown that I should have been quite surprised at him, only one 
never is surprised in dr under certain circumstances. 

" I can't eat 'em now," said the greasy man (with his false 
old teeth, I wonder he could eat anything). " I remember Al- 
vanley eating three suppers once at Carlton House — one night 
de petite comitcy 

^^ Fetit comite, sir," said Mr. Sterne. 

" Dammy, sir, let me tell my own story my own way. I say, 
one night at Carlton House, playing at blind-hookey with 
York, Wales, Tom Raikes, Prince Boothby, and Dutch Sam the 
boxer, Alvanley ate three suppers, and won three-and-twenty 
hundred pounds in ponies. Never saw a fellow with such an 
appetite, except Wales in his good time. But he destroyed the 
finest digestion a man ever had with maraschino, by Jove — 
always at it." 

" Try mine," said Mr. Sterne. 

" What a doosid queer box," says Mr. Brummell. 

" I had it from a Capuchin friar in this town. The box is 
but a horn one ; but to the nose of sensibility Araby's perfume 
is not more delicate." 

" I call it doosid stale old rappee," says Mr. Brummell — 
(as for me I declare I could not smell anything at all in either 
of the boxes.) " Old boy in smock-frock, take a pinch ? " 

The old boy in the smock-frock, as Mr. Brummell called him, 
was a very old man, with long white beard, wearing not a smock- 
frock, but a shirt ; and he had actually nothing else save a rope 
round his neck, which hung behind his chair in the queerest 
way. 

" Fair sir," he said, turning to Mr. Brummell, " when the 
Prince of Wales and his father laid siege to our town " 

" What nonsense are you talking, old cock ? " says Mr. 
Brummell ; " Wales was never here. His late Majesty George 
IV. passed through on his way to Hanover. My good man, 
you don't seem to know what's up at all. What is he talkin' 
about the siege of Calais .? I lived here fifteen years ! Ought 
to know. What's his old name ? " 

" I am Master Eustace of Saint Peter's," said the old gen- 
tleman in the shirt. " When my Lord King Edward laid siege 
to this city " 

" Laid siege to Jericho ! " cries Mr. Brummell. " The old 
man is cracked — cracked, sir ! " 

" Laid siege to this city," continued the old man, " I 



DESSEIN'S. 



229 



and five more promised Messire Gautier de Mauny that we 
would give ourselves up as ransom for the place. And we came 
before our Lord King Edward, attired as you see, and the fair 
queen begged our lives out of her gramercy." 

" Queen, nonsense ! you mean the Princess of Wales — 
pretty woman, J>etit nez retrousse^ grew monstrous stout ? " sug- 
gested Mr. Brummell, whose reading was evidently not exten- 
sive. " Sir Sidney Smith was a fine fellow, great talker, hook 
nose, so has Lord Cochrane, so has Lord Wellington. She was 
very sweet on Sir Sidney." 

"Your acquaintance with the history of Calais does not 
seem to be considerable," said Mr. Sterne to Mr. Brummell, 
with a shrug. 

*' Don't it, bishop ? — for I conclude you are a bishop by 
your wig. I know Calais as well as any man. I lived here 
for years before I took that confounded consulate at Caen. 
Lived in this hotel, then at Leleux's. People used to stop 
here. Good fellows used to ask for George Brummell ; Hert- 
ford did, so did the Duchess of Devonshire. Not know Calais 
indeed ! That is a good joke. Had many a good dinner 
here : sorry I ever left it." 

" My Lord King Edward," chirped the queer old gentle- 
man in the shirt, " colonized the place with his English, after 
we had yielded it up to him. I have heard tell they kept it 
for nigh three hundred years, till my Lord de Guise took it 
from a fair Queen, Mary of blessed memory, a holy woman. 
Eh, but Sire Gautier of Mauny was a good knight, a valiant 
captain, gentle and courteous withal ! Do you remember his 
ransoming the ? " 

" What is the old fellow twaddlin' about .'' " cries Brummell. 
" He is talking about some knight ? — I never spoke to a 
knight, and very seldom to a baronet. Firkins, my butterman, 
was a knight — a knight and alderman. Wales knighted him 
once on going into the City." 

" I am not surprised that the gentleman should not under- 
stand Messire Eustace of St. Peter's," said the ghostly indi- 
vidual addressed as Mr. Sterne. " Your reading doubtless has 
not been very extensive ? " 

" Dammy, sir, speak for yourself ! " cries Mr. Brummell, 
testily. " I never professed to be a reading man, but I was as 
good as my neighbors. Wales wasn't a reading man ; York 
wasn't a reading man ; Clarence wasn't a reading man ; Sussex 
was ; but he wasn't a man in society. I remember reading your 
* Sentimental Journey, old boy : read it to the Duchess at Beau- 



«3o 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



voir, I recollect, and she cried over it. Doosid clever amusing 
book, and does you great credit. Birron wrote doosid clever 
books, too ; so did Monk Lewis. George Spencer was an 
elegant poet, and my dear Duchess of Devonshire, if she had 
not been a grande dame, would have beat 'em all, by Gee rge. 
Wales couldn't write : he could sing, but he couldn't spell." 

" Ah, you know the great world ? so did I in my time, Mr. 
Brummell. I have had the visiting tickets of half the nobility 
at my lodgings in Bond Street. But they left me there no 
more cared for than last year's calendar," sighed Mr. Sterne. 
" I wonder who is the inode in London now ? One of our late 
arrivals, my Lord Macaulay, has prodigious merit and learning, 
and, faith, his histories are more amusing than any novels, my 
own included." 

" Don't know, I'm sure ; not in my line. Pick this bone of 
chicken," says Mr. Brummell, trifling with a skeleton bird be- 
fore him. 

" I remember in this city of Calais worse fare than yon 
bird," said old Mr. Eustace of Saint Peter's. " Marry, sirs, 
when my Lord King Edward laid siege to us, lucky was he 
who could get a slice of horse for his breakfast, and a rat 
was sold at the price of a hare." 

" Hare is coarse food, never tasted rat," remarked the 
Beau. " Table-d'hote poor fare enough for a man like me, who 
has been accustomed to the best of cookery. But rat — stifle 
me ! I couldn't swallow that : never could bear hardship at 
all." 

" We had to bear enough when my Lord of England pressed 
us. 'Twas pitiful to see the faces of our women as the siege 
went on, and hear the little ones asking for dinner." 

" Always a bore, children. At dessert, they are bad 
enough, but at dinner they're the deuce and all," remarked Mr. 
Brummell. 

Messire Eustace of St. Peter's did not seem to pay much 
attention to the Beau's remarks, but continued his own train of 
thought as old men will do. 

" I hear," said he, " that there has actually been no war 
between us of France and you men of England for wellnigh 
fifty year. Ours has ever been a nation of warriors. And 
besides her regular found men-at-arms, 'tis said the English of 
the present time have more than a hundred thousand of archers 
with weapons that will carry for half a mile. And a multitude 
have come amongst us of late from a great Western country, 
never so much as heard of in my time — valiant men and great 



DESSEIN'S. 



231 



drawers of the long-bow, and they say they have ships in ar- 
mor that no shot can penetrate. Is it so ? Wonderful ! The 
best armor, gossips, is a stout heart." 

" And if ever manly heart beat under shirt-frill, thine is 
that heart, Sir Eustace ! " cried Mr. Sterne, enthusiastically. 

" We, of France, were never accused of lack of courage, 
sir, in so far as I know," said Messire Eustace. " We have 
shown as much in a thousand wars with you English by sea 
and land ; and sometimes we conquered, and sometimes, as is 
the fortune of war, we were discomfited. And notably in a 

great sea-fight which befell off Ushant on the first of June 

Our Amiral, Messire Villaret de Joyeuse, on board his galleon 
named the ' Vengeur,' being sore pressed by an English bom- 
bard, rather than yield the crew of his ship to mercy, deter- 
mined to go down with all on board of her : and to the cry of 

Vive la Re'pub or, I would say, of Notre Dame a la Res- 

cousse, he and his crew all sank to an immortal grave " 

" Sir," said I, looking v.'ith amazement at the old gentle- 
man, " Surely, surely there is some mistake in your statement. 
Permit me to observe that the action of the first of June took 
place five hundred years after your time, and " 

"Perhaps I am confusing my dates," said the old gentle- 
man, with a faint blush. " You say I am mixing up the trans- 
actions of my time on earth with the story of my successors ? 
It may be so. We take no count of a few centuries more or 
less in our dwelling by the darkling Stygian river. Of late, 
there came amongst us a good knight, Messire de Cambronne, 
who fought against you English in the country of Flanders, 
being captain of the guard of my Lord the King of France, 
in a famous battle where you English would have been utterly 
routed but for the succor of the Prussian heathen. This Messire 
de Cambronne, when bidden to yield by you of England, an- 
swered this, ' The guard dies, but never surrenders ;' and fought 
a long time afterwards, as became a good knight. In our 
wars with you of England it may have pleased the Fates to 
give you the greater success, but on our side, also, there has 
been no lack of brave deeds performed by brave men." 

" King Edward may have been the victor, sir, as being the 
strongest, but you are the hero of the siege of Calais ! " cried 
Mr. Sterne. " Your story is sacred, and your name has been 
blessed for five hundred years. Wherever men speak of patriot- 
ism and sacrifice, Eustace of Saint Pierre shall be beloved and 
remembered. I prostrate myself before the bare feet which 
Stood before King Edward. What collar of chivalry is to be 



232 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



compared to that glorious order which you wear ? Think, sir, 
how out of the myriad milHons of our race, you, and some few 
more, stand forth as exemplars of duty and honor. Fortunatl 
nimium ! " 

"Sir,'' said the old gentleman, "I did but my duty at a 
painful moment ; and 'tis matter of wonder to me that men 
talk still, and glorify such a trifling matter. By our Lady's 
grace, in the fair kingdom of France, there are scores of thou- 
sands of men, gentle and simple, who would do as I did. 
Does not every sentinel at his post, does not every archer in 
the front of battle, brave it, and die where his captain bids 
him ? Who am I that I should be chosen out of all France to 
be an example of fortitude ? I braved no tortures, though 
these I trust I would have endured with a good heart. I was 
subject to threats only. Who was the Roman knight of whom 
the Latin clerk Horatius tells ? " 

" A Latin clerk ? Faith, I forget my Latin," says Mr. 
Brummell. "Ask the parson here." 

" Messire Regulus, I remember, was his name. Taken pris- 
oner by the Saracens, he gave his knightly word, and was per- 
mitted to go seek a ransom among his own people. Being 
unable to raise the sum that was a fitting ransom for such a 
knight, he returned to Afric, and cheerfully submitted to the 
tortures which the Paynims inflicted. And 'tis said he took 
leave of his friends as gayly as though he were going to a vil- 
lage kermes, or riding to his garden house in the suburbs of 
the city." 

" Great, good, glorious man ! " cried Mr. Sterne, very much 
moved. " Let me embrace that gallant hand and bedew it 
with my tears ! As long as honor lasts thy name shall be re- 
membered. See this dewdrop twinkling on my cheek ! 'Tis 
the sparkling tribute that Sensibility pays to Valor. Though 
in my life and practice I may turn from Virtue, believe me, I 
never have ceased to honor her ! Ah, Virtue ! Ah, Sensi- 
bility ! Oh " 

Here Mr. Sterne was interrupted by a monk of the Order 
of St. Francis, who stepped into the room, and begged us all 
to take a pinch of his famous old rappee. I suppose the snuff 
was very pungent, for, with a great start, I woke up ; and now 
perceived that I must have been dreaming altogether. " Des- 
sein's " of nowadays is not the " Dessein's " which Mr. Sterne, 
and Mr. Brummell, and I recollect in the good old times. The 
town of Calais has bought the old hotel, and " Dessein " has 
gone over to " Quillacq's." And I was there yesterday. And 



ON SOME CARP A T SANS SOUCL 



233 



I remember old diligences, and old postilions in pigtails and 
jackboots, who were once as alive as I am, and whose crack- 
ing whips I have heard in the midnight many and many a time. 
Now, where are they ? Behold, they have been ferried ovei 
Styx, and have passed away into limbo, 

I wonder what time does my boat go ? Ah ! Here comes 
the waiter bringing me my little bill. 



ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCx. 

We have lately made the acquaintance of an old lady of 
ninety, who has passed the last twenty-five years of her old life 
in a great metropolitan establishment, the workhouse, namely, 
of the parish of Saint Lazarus*. Stay — twenty-three or four 
years ago, she came out once, and thought to earn a little 
money by hop-picking ; but being overworked, and having to 
lie out at night, she got a palsy which has incapacitated her 
from all further labor, and which has caused her poor old limbs 
to shake ever since. 

An illustration of that dismal proverb which tells us how 
poverty makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows, this 
poor old shaking body has to lay herself down every night in 
her workhouse bed by the side of some other old woman with 
whom she may or may not agree. She herself can't be a very 
pleasant bedfellow, poor thing ! with her shaking old limbs and 
cold feet. She lies awake a deal of the night, to be sure, not 
thinking of happy old times, for hers never were happy ; but 
sleepless with aches, and agues, and rheumatism of old age. 
" The gentleman gave me brandy-and-water," she said, her old 
voice shaking with rapture at the thought. I never had a 
great opinion of Queen Charlotte, but I like her better now 
from what this old lady told me. The Queen, who loved snuff 
herself, has left a legacy of snuff to certain poorhouses ; and, 
in her watchful nights, this old woman takes a pinch of Queen 
Charlotte's snuff, " and it do comfort me, sir, that it do ! " 
Piiheris exigiii munus. Here is a forlorn aged creature, shak- 
ing with palsy, with no soul among the great struggling multi- 
tude of mankind to care for her, not quite trampled out of life, 
but past and forgotten in the rush, made a little happy, and 
soothed in her hours of unrest by this penny legacy. Let me 



234 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



think as I write. (The next month's sermon, thank goodness ! 
is safe in press.) This discourse will appear at the season 
when I have read that wassail-bowls make their appearance ; at 
the season of pantomime, turkey and sausages, plum-puddings, 
jollifications for school-boys ; Christmas bills, and reminis- 
cences more or less sad and sweet for elders. If we oldsters 
are not merry, we shall be having a semblance of merriment. 
We shall see the young folks laughing round the holly-bush. 
We shall pass the bottle round cosily as we sit by the fire. 
That old thing will have a sort of festival too. Beef, beer, and 
pudding will be served to her for that day also, Christmas 
falls on a Thursday. Friday is the workhouse day for coming 
out. Mary, remember that old Goody Twcshoes has her invi- 
tation for Friday, 26th December ? Ninety is she, poor old 
soul ? Ah ! what a bonny face to catch under a mistletoe ! 
"Yes, ninety, sir," she says, "and my mother was a hundred, 
and my grandmother was a hundred and two." 

Herself ninety, her mother, a hundred, her grandmother a 
hundred and two .-' What a queer calculation ! 

Ninety ! Very good, granny : you were born, then, in 1772. 

Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were 
orn, and was born therefore in 1745. 

Your grandmother was thirty when her daughter was born, 
and was born therefore in 17 15. 

We will begin with the present granny first. My good old 
creature, you can't of course remember, but that little gentle- 
man for whom your mother was laundress in the Temple was 
the ingenious Mr. Goldsmith, author of a " History of Eng- 
land," the " Vicar of Wakefield," and many diverting pieces. 
You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in Brick 
Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was 
always good to children. That gentleman who wellnigh smoth- 
ered you by sitting down on you as you lay in a chair asleep 
was the learned Mr. S. Johnson, whose history of " Rasselas " 
you have never read, my poor soul ; and whose tragedy of 
" Irene " I don't believe any man in these kingdoms ever per- 
used. That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to come to the 
chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed, wrote a 
more amusing book than any of the scholars, your Mr. Burke 
and your Mr. Johnson, and your Dr. Goldsmith. Your father 
often took him home in a chair to his lodgings ; and has done 
as much for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous wit. Of 
course, my good creature, you remember the Gordon Riots, 
and crying No Popery before Mr. Langdale's house, the Po- 



ON SOME CARP A T SANS SOU CI. 235 

pish distiller's, and that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield's books 
in Bloomsbury Square ? Bless us, what a heap of illuminations 
you have seen ! For the glorious victory over the Americans 
at Breed's Hill ; for the peace in 18 14, and the beautiful 
Chinese bridge in St. James's Park ; for the coronation of his 
Majesty, whom you recollect as Prince of Wales, Goody, don't 
you ? Yes ; and you went in a procession of laundresses to 
pay your respects to his good lady, the injured Queen of Eng- 
land, at Brandenburg House ; and you remember your mother 
told you how she was taken to see the Scotch lords executed 
at the Tower. And as for your grandmother, she was born 
five years after the battle of Malplaquet, she was ; where her 
poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for the Queen. 
With the help of a " Wade's Chronology," I can make out ever 
so queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a pedigree as 
authentic as many in the peerage-books. 

Peerage-books and pedigrees ? What does she know about 
them .? Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, 
literary gentlemen, and the like, what have they ever been to 
her ? Granny, did you ever hear of General Wolfe ? Your 
mother may have seen him embark, and your father may have 
carried a musket under him. Your grandmother may have 
cried huzza for Marlborough ; but what is the Prince Duke to 
you, and did you ever so much as hear tell of his name ? How 
many hundred or thousand of years had that toad lived who 
was in the coal at the defunct Exhibition ? — and yet he was not 
a bit better informed than toads seven or eight hundred years 
younger. 

" Don't talk to me your nonsense about Exhibitions, and 
Prince Dukes, and toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what 
is it ? " says granny. " I know there was a good Queen Char- 
lotte, for she left me snuff ; and it comforts me of a night when 
I lie awake." 

To me there is something very touching in the notion of 
that little pinch of comfort doled out to granny, and gratefully 
inhaled by her in the darkness. Don't you remember what 
traditions there used to be of chests of plate, bulses of dia- 
monds, laces of inestimable value, sent out of the country 
privately by the old Queen, to enrich certain relations in 
M-ckl-nb-rg Str-l-tz ? Not all the treasure went. Non omnis 
moritur. A* poor old palsied thing at midnight is made happy 
sometimes as she lifts her shaking old hand to her nose. Glid- 
ing noiselessly among the beds where lie the poor creatures 
huddled in their cheerless dormitory, I fancy an old ghost 



236 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

with a snuff-box that does not creak. " There, Goody, take of 
my rappee. You will not sneeze, and I shall not say, ' God 
bless you.' But you will think kindly of old Queen Charlotte, 
won't you .-• Ah ! I had a many troubles, a many troubles. I 
was a prisoner almost so much as you are. I had to eat boiled 
mutton every day : cntre nous, I abominated it. But I never 
complained. I swallowed it. I made the best of a hard life. 
We have all our burdens to bear. But hark ! I hear the cock- 
crow, and snuff the morning air." And with this the royal 
ghost vanishes up the chimney — if there be a chimney in that 
dismal harem, where poor old Twoshoes and her companions 
pass their nights — their dreary nights, their restless nights, their 
cold long nights, shared in what glum companionship, illumined 
by what a feeble taper ! 

" Did I understand you, my good Twoshoes, to say that 
your mother was seven-and-twenty years old when you were born, 
and that she married your esteemed father when she herself 
was twenty-five .'' 1 745, then, was the date of your dear mother's 
birth. I dare say her father was absent in the Low Countries, 
with his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, under whom 
he had the honor of carrying a halberd at the famous engage- 
ment of Fontenoy — or if not there, he may have been at Pres- 
ton Pans, under General Sir John Cope, when the wild High- 
landers broke through all the laws of discipline and the Eng- 
lish lines ; and, being on the spot, did he see the famous ghost 
which didn't appear to Colonel Gardiner of the Dragoons .■' 
My good creature, is it possible you don't remember that Doc- 
tor Swift, Sir Robert Walpole (my Lord Oxford, as you justly 
say), old Sarah Marlborough, and little Mr. Pope, of Twitnam, 
died in the year of your birth ? What a wretched memory you 
have ! What .'' haven't they a library, and the commonest books 
of reference at the old convent of Saint Lazarus, where you 
dwell >. " 

'' Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince William, Dr. Swift, 
Atossa, and Mr. Pope, of Twitnam ! What is the gentleman 
talking about .''" says old Goody, with a "Ho! ho!" and a 
laugh like an old parrot — you know they live to be as old as 
Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred is compar- 
atively young (ho ! ho! ho!). Yes, and likewise carps live to 
an immense old age. Some which Frederick the Great fed at 
Sans Souci are there now, with great humps of blue mould on 
their old backs ; and they could tell all sorts of queer stories, 
if they chose to speak — but they are very silent, carps are — of 
their nature peu communicatives. Oh ! what has been thy long 



ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCL 



«37 



life, old Goody, but a dole of bread-and-water and a perch on a 
cage ; a dreary swim round and round a Lethe of a pond ? What 
are Rossbach or Jena to those mouldy ones, and do they know 
it is a grandchild of England who brings bread to feed them ? 

No ! Those Sans Souci carps may live to be a thousand 
years old and have nothing to tell but that one day is like 
another : and the history of friend Goody Twoshoes has not 
much more variety than theirs. Hard labor, hard fare, hard bed, 
numbing cold all night, and gnawing hunger most days. That 
is her lot. Is it lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank heaven, 
I am not as one of these ? " If I were eighty, would I like to 
feel the hunger always gnawing, gnawing ? to have to get up 
and make a bow when Mr. Bumble the beadle entered the 
common room ? to have to listen to Miss Prim, who came to 
give me her ideas of the next world ? If I were eighty, I own 
I should not like to have to sleep with another gentleman of 
my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, 
and snoring ; to march down my vale of years at word of com- 
mand, accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the 
other prisoners in my dingy, hopeless old gang ; to hold out a 
trembling hand for a sickly pittance of gruel, and say, " Thank 
you, ma'am," to Miss Prim, when she has done reading her 
sermon. John ! when Goody Twoshoes comes next Friday, I 
desire she may not be disturbed by theological controversies. 
You have a very fair voice, and I heard you and the maids sing- 
ing a hymn very sweetly the other night, and was thankful that 
our humble household should be in such harmony. Poor old 
Twoshoes is so old and toothless and quaky, that she can't sing 
a bit ; but don't be giving yourself airs over her, because she 
can't sing and you can. Make her comfortable at our kitchen 
hearth. Set that old kettle to sing by our hob. Warm her old 
stomach with nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be 
kind to the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave 
to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be 
many more Christmases for thee ? Think of the ninety she has 
seen already ; the fourscore and ten cold, cheerless, nipping 
New Years ! 

If you were in her place, would you like to have a remem- 
brance of better early days, when you were young, and happy, 
and loving, perhaps ; or would you prefer to have no past on 
which your mind could rest? About the year 1788, Goody, 
were your cheeks rosy, and your eyes bright, and did some 
young fellow in powder and a pigtail look in them ? We may 
grow old, but to us some stories never are old. On a sudden 



238 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

they rise up, not dead, but living — not forgotten, but freshly re- 
membered. The eyes gleam on us as they used to do. The 
dear voice thrills in our hearts. The rapture of the meeting, 
the terrible, terrible parting, again and again the tragedy is 
acted over. Yesterday, in the street, I saw a pair of eyes so 
like two which used to brighten at my coming once, that the 
whole past came back as I walked lonely, in the rush of the 
Strand, and I was young again in the midst of joys and sorrows 
alike sweet and sad, alike sacred and fondly remembered. 

If I tell a tale out of school, will any harm come to my old 
school-girl ? Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, which was a 
source of great pain and anxiety to Goody Twoshoes. She sewed 
it away in her old stays somewhere, thinking here at least was a 
safe investment — (vestis — a vest — an investment, — pardon me, 
thou poor old thing, but I cannot help the pleasantry). And 
what do you think .■' Another pensionnaire of the establishment 
cut the coin out of Goody's stays — aii oldiuoman who wait upon 
ttvo crutches ! Faugh, the old witch ! What t Violence amongst 
these toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble ones ? Robbery 
amongst the penniless ? Dogs coming and snatching Lazarus's 
crumbs out of his lap ? Ah, how indignant Goody was as she 
told the story ! To that pond at Potsdam where the carps live 
for hundreds of hundreds of years, with hunches of blue mould 
on their back, I dare say the little Prince and Princess of Preus- 
sen-Britannien come sometimes with crumbs and cakes to feed 
the mouldy ones. Those e3^es may have goggled from beneath 
the weeds at Napoleon's jack-boots : they have seen Frederick's 
lean shanks reflected in their pool ; and perhaps Monsieur de 
Voltaire has fed them — and now, for a crumb of biscuit they will 
fight, push, hustle, rob, squabble, gobble, relapsing into their 
tranquillity when the ignoble struggle is over. Sans souci, 
indeed ! It is mighty well writing " Sans souci" over the gate ; 
but where is the gate through which Care has not slipped ? She 
perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box : she 
whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair : she glides up 
the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their 
bed-royal : this very night I dare say she will perch upon poor 
old Goody Twoshoes's meagre bolster, and whisper, " Will the 
gentleman and those ladies ask me again ? No, no ; they will 
forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody ! For shame of yourself ! 
Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. 
What ? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety 
times? For fourscore and ten years has it been thy lot to 
totter on this earth, hungry and obscure .-' Peace and good* 



A U TOUR DE MON CHAPEAU. 



239 



will to thee, let us say at this Christmas season. Come, drink, 
eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old pilgrim ! And of 
the bread which God's bounty gives us, I pray, brother reader, 
we may not forget to set aside a part for those noble and silent 
poor, from whose innocent hands war has torn the means of 
labor. Enough ! As I hope for beef at Christmas, I vow a 
note shall be sent to Saint Lazarus Union House, in which Mr, 
Roundabout requests the honor of Mrs. Twoshoes's company 
on Friday, 26th December. 



AUTOUR DE MON CHAPEAU. 

Never have I seen a more noble tragic face. In the centre 
of the forehead there was a great furrow of care, towards which 
the brows rose piteously. What a deep solemn grief in the 
eyes ! They looked blankly at the object before them, but 
through it, as it were, and into the grief beyond. In moments 
of pain, have you not looked at some indifferent object so ? It 
mingles dumbly with your grief, and remains afterwards con- 
nected W'ith it in your mind. It may be some indifferent thing 
— a book which you were reading at the time when you receiv^ed 
her farewell letter (how well you remember the paragraph after- 
wards — the shape of the words, and their position on the page) j 
the words you were writing when your mother came in, and 
said it was all over — she was married — Emily married — to 
that insignificant little rival at whom you have laughed a 
hundred times in her company. Well, well ; my friend and 
reader, whoe'er you be — old man or young, wife or maiden — 
you have had your grief-pang. Boy, you have lain awake the 
first night at school, and thought of home. Worse still, man, 
you have parted from the dear ones with bursting heart : and, 
lonely boy, recall the bolstering an unfeeling comrade gave you ; 
and, lonely man, just torn from your children — their little tokens 
of affection yet in your pocket — pacing the deck at evening in 
the midst of the roaring ocean, you can remember how you were 
told that supper was ready, and how you went down to the cabin 
and had brandy-and-water and biscuit. You remember the taste 
of them. Yes ; forever. You took them whilst you and your 
Grief were sitting together, and your Grief clutched you round 
the soul. Serpent, how you have writhed round me, and bitten 



24° 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



me ! Remorse, Remembrance, &c., come in the night season, 
and I feel you gnawing, gnawing 1****1 tell you that 
man's face was like Laocoon's (which, by the way, I always 
think overrated. The real head is at Brussels, at the Duke 
Daremberg's, not at Rome). 

That man ! What man ? That man of whom I said that 
his magnificent countenance exhibited the noblest tragic woe. 
He was not of European blood. He was handsome, but not of 
European beauty. His face white — not of a Northern white- 
ness ; his eyes protruding somewhat, and rolling in their grief. 
Those eyes had seen the Orient sun, and his beak was the 
eagle's. His lips were full. The beard, curling round them, 
was unkempt and tawny. The locks were of a deep, deep cop- 
pery red. The hands, swart and powerful, accustomed to the 
rough grasp of the wares in which he dealt, seemed unused to 
the flimsy artifices of the bath. He came from the Wilderness, 
and its sands were on his robe, his cheek, his tattered sandal, 
and the hardy foot it covered. 

And his grief — whence came his sorrow ? I will tell you. 
He bore it in his hand. He had evidently just concluded the 
compact by which it became his. His business was that of a 
purchaser of domestic raiment. At early dawn — nay, at what 
hour when the City is alive — do we not all hear the nasal cry 
of " Clo ? " In Paris, Habits Galons, Marchaiid d' habits, is 
the twanging signal with which the wandering merchant makes 
his presence known. It was in Paris I saw this man. Where 
else have I not seen him ? In the Roman Ghetto — at the Gate 
of David, in his fathers' once imperial city. The man I mean 
was an itinerant vendor and purchaser of wardrobes — what you 
call an * * * Enough ! You know his name. 

On his left shoulder hung his bag ; and he held in that 
hand a white hat, which I am sure he had just purchased, and 
which was the cause of the grief which smote his noble features. 
Of course I cannot particularize the sum, but he had given too 
much for that hat. He felt he might have got the thing for 
less money. It was not the amount, I am sure ; it was the 
principle involved. He had given fourpence (let us say) for 
that which threepence would have purchased. He had been 
done : and a manly shame was upon him, that he, whose 
energy, acuteness, experience, point of honor, should have 
made him the victor in any mercantile duel in which he should 
engage, had been overcome by a porter's wife, who very likely 
sold him the old hat, or by a student who was tired of it. I 
can understand his grief. Do I seem to be speaking of it in a 



A U TOUR DE MON CHAPE A U. 



241 



disrespectful or flippant way ? Then you mistake me. He 
had been outwitted. He had desired, coaxed, schemed, hag- 
gled, got what he wanted, and now found he had paid too 
much for his bargain. You don't suppose I would ask you to 
laugh at that man's grief ? It is you, clumsy cynic, who are 
disposed to sneer, whilst it may be tears of genuine sympathy 
are trickling down this nose of mine. What do you mean by 
laughing ? If you saw a wounded soldier on the field of bat- 
tle, would you laugh ? If you saw a ewe robbed of her lamb, 
would you laugh, you brute .'' It is you who are the cynic, and 
have no feeling : and you sneer because that grief is unintel- 
ligible to you which touches my finer sensibility. The Old- 
Clothes'-Man had been defeated in one of the daily battles of 
his most interesting, checkered, adventurous life. 

Have you ever figured to yourself what such a life must 
be ? The pursuit and the conquest of twopence must be the 
most eager and fascinating of occupations. We might all 
engage in that business if we would. Do not whist-players, 
for example, toil, and think, and lose their temper over six- 
penny pomts .'' They 'bring study, natural genius, long fore- 
thought, memory, and careful historical experience to bear 
upon their favorite labor. Don't tell me that it is the six- 
penny points, and five shillings the rub, which keeps them 
for hours over their painted pasteboard. It is the desire to 
conquer. Hours pass by. Night glooms. Dawn, it may be, 
rises unheeded ; and they sit calling for fresh cards at the 
"Portland," or the "Union," while waning candles splutter in 
the sockets, and languid waiters snooze in the ante-room. 
Sol rises. Jones has lost four pounds : Brown has won two ; 
Robinson lurks away to his family house and (mayhap, in- 
dignant) Mrs. R. Hours of evening, night, morning, have 
passed away whilst they have been waging this sixpenny bat- 
tle. What is the loss of four pounds to Jones, the gain of 
two to Brown ? B. is, perhaps, so rich that two pounds more 
or less are as naught to him ; J. is so hopelessly involved 
that to win four pounds cannot benefit his creditors, or alter 
his condition ; but they play for that stake : they put forward 
their best energies : they ruff, finesse (what are the technical 
words, and how do I know ?). It is but a sixpenny game if 
you like ; but they want to win it. So as regards my friend 
yonder with the hat. He stakes his money : he wishes to 
win the game, not the hat merely. I am not prepared to say 
that he is not inspired by a noble ambition. Caesar wished 
to be first in a village. If first of a hundred yokels, why not 

16 



242 



roujVdabout papers. 



first of two ? And my friend the old-clothes'-man wishes to 
win his game, as well as to turn his little sixpence. 

Suppose in the game of life — and it is but a twopenny 
game after all — you are equally eager of winning. Shall you 
be ashamed of your ambition, or glory in it .'' There are 
games, too, which are becoming to particular periods of life. 
I remember in the days of our youth, when my friend Arthur 
Bowler was an eminent cricketer. Slim, swift, strong, well- 
built, he presented a goodly appearance on the ground in his 
flannel uniform. Militasti noii sine gloria, Bowler my boy ! 
Hush ! We tell no tales. Mum is the word. Yonder comes 
Charley his son. Now Charles his son has taken the field, 
and is famous among the eleven of his school. Bowler senior, 
with his capacious waistcoat, &c., waddling after a ball, would 
present an absurd object, whereas it does the eyes good to see 
Bowler junior scouring the plain — a young exemplar of joyful 
health, vigor, activity. The old boy wisely contents himself 
with amusements more becoming his age and waist ; takes his 
sober ride ; visits his farm soberly — busies himself about his 
pigs, his i^loughing, his peaches, or what not ? Very small 
routinicr amusements interest him ; and (thank goodness !) 
nature provides very kindly for kindly-disposed fogies. We 
relish those things which we scorned in our lusty youth. I see 
the young folks of an evening kindling and glowing over their 
delicious novels. I look up and watch the eager eye flashing 
down the page, being, for my part, perfectly contented with my 
twaddling old volume of " Howel's Letters," or the Gentlanafi's 
Magazine. I am actually arrived at such a calm frame of mind 
that I like batter-pudding, I never should have believed it 
possible ; but it is so. Yet a little while, and I may relish 
water-gruel. It will be the age of mon lait de poiile ct mon bon- 
net de nuit. And then— the cotton extinguisher is pulled over 
the old noddle, and the little flame of life is popped out. 

Don't you know elderly people who make learned notes in 
Army Lists, Peerages, and the like "i This is the batter-pud- 
ding, water-gruel of old age. The worn-out digestion does not 
care for stronger food. Formerly it could swallow twelve- 
hours' tough reading, and digest an encyclopaedia. 

If I had children to educate, I would, at ten or twelve 
years of age, have a professor, or professoress, of whist for 
them, and cause them to be well grounded in that great and 
useful game. You cannot learn it well when you are old, any 
more than you can learn dancing or billiards. In our house at 
home we youngsters did not play whist because we were dear 



AUTOUR DE MGN CHAPE A U. 



243 



obedient children, and the elders said playing at cards was " a 
waste of time." A waste of time, my good people ! Allans! 
What do elderly home-keeping people do of a night after din- 
ner ? Darby gets his newspaper ; my dear Joan her Missionary 
Magazine or her volume of Cumming's Sermons — and don't 
you know what ensues ? Over the arm of Darby's arm-chair 
the paper flutters to the ground unheeded, and he performs 
the trumpet obbligato que voiis savez on his old nose. My 
dear old Joan's head nods over her sermon (awakening though 
the doctrine may be). Ding, ding, ding : can that be ten 
o'clock ? It is time to send the servant to bed, my dear — and 
to bed master and mistress go too. But they have not wasted 
their time playing at cards. Oh, no ! I belong to a Club 
where there is whist of a night ; and not a little amusing is it 
to hear Brown speak of Thompson's play, and vice versa. But 
there is one man — Greatorex let us call him — who is the ac- 
knowledged Captain and primus of all the whist-players. We 
all secretly admire him. I, for my part, watch him in private 
life, hearken to what he says, note what he orders for dinner, 
and have that feeling of awe for him that I used to have as a 
boy for the cock of the school. Not play at whist ? '■'■Quelle 
triste vieillesse vous vans preparez ! " were the words of the great 
and good Bishop of Autun. I can't. It is too late now. Too 
late ! too late ! Ah ! humiliating confession ! That joy might 
have been clutched, but the life-stream has swept us by it — the 
swift life-stream rushing to the nearing sea. Too late ! too 
late ! Twentystone my boy ! When you read in the papers 
*' Valse a deux temps," and all the fashionable dances taught 
to adults by " Miss Lightfoots," don't you feel that you would 
like to go in and learn ? Ah, it is too late ! You have passed 
the choreas, Master Twentystone, and the young people are 
dancing without vou. 

I don't believe much of what my Lord Byron the poet says ; 
but when he wrote, " So, for a good old gentlemanly vice, I 
think I shall put up with avarice," I think his lordship meant 
what he wrote, and if he practised what he preached, shall not 
quarrel with him. As an occupation in declining years, I 
declare I think saving is useful, amusing, and not unbecoming.' 
It must be a perpetual amusement. It is a game that can be 
played by day, by night, at home and abroad, and at which you 
must win in the long run. I am tired and want a cab. The 
fare to my house, say, is two shillings. The cabman will nat- 
urally want half a crown. I pull out my book. I show him the 
distance is exactly three miles and fifteen hundred and ninety 



244 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



yards. I offer him my card — my winning card. As he retires 
with the two shillings, blaspheming inwardly, every curse is a 
compliment to my skill. I have played him and beat him ; and 
a sixpence is my spoil and just reward. This is a game, by the 
way, which women play far more cleverly than we do. But 
what an interest it imparts to life ! During the whole drive 
home I know I shall have my game at the journey's end ; am 
sure of my hand, and shall beat my adversary. Or I can play 
in another way. I won't have a cab at all, I will wait for the 
omnibus : I will be one of the damp fourteen in that steaming 
vehicle. I will wait about in the rain for an hour, and 'bus 
after 'bus shall pass, but I will not be beat. I will have a 
place, and get it at length, with my boots wet through, and an 
umbrella dripping between my legs. I have a rheumatism, 
a cold, a sore throat, a sulky evening, — a doctor's bill to- 
morrow perhaps ? Yes, but I have won my game, and am 
gainer of a shilling on this rubber. 

If you play this game all through life it is wonderful what 
daily interest it has, and amusing occupation. For instance, 
my wife goes to sleep after dinner over her volume of sermons. 
As soon as the dear soul is sound asleep, I advance softly and 
puff out her candle. Her pure dreams will be all the happier 
without that light ; and, say she sleeps an hour, there is a penny 
gained. 

As for clothes, parhleu ! there is not much money to be 
saved in clothes, for the fact is, as a man advances in life — as 
he becomes an Ancient Briton (mark the pleasantry) — he goes 
without clothes. When my tailor proposes something in the 
way of a change of raiment, I laugh in his face. My blue coat 
and brass buttons will last these ten years. Il; is seedy ? What 
then ? I don't want to charm anybody in particular. You say 
that my clothes are shabby ? What do I care .'' When I wished 
to look well in somebody's eyes, the matter may have been 
different. But now, when I receive my bill of lo/. (let us say) 
at the year's end, and contrast it with old tailor's reckonings, I 
feel that I have played the game with master tailor, and beat 
him ; and my old clothes are a token of the victory. 

I do not like to give servants board-wages, though they are 
cheaper than household bills : but I know they save out of 
board wages, and so beat me. This shows that it is not the 
money but the game which interests me. So about wine. I 
have it good and dear. I will trouble you to tell me where to 
get it good and cheap. You may as well give me the address 
of a shop where I can buy meat for fourpence a pound, or 



A U TOUR DE MON CHAPEAU. 



245 



sovereigns for fifteen shillings apiece. At the game of auctions, 
docks, shy wine-merchants, depend on it there is no winning ; 
and I would as soon think of buying jewelry at an auction in 
Fleet Street as of purchasing wine from one of your dreadful 
needy wine-agents such as infest every man's door. Grudge 
myself good wine ? As soon grudge my horse corn. Merci ! 
that would be a very losing game indeed, and your humble 
servant has no relish for such. 

But in the very pursuit of saving there must be a hundred 
harmless delights and pleasures which we who are careless 
necessarily forego. What do you know about the natural his- 
tory of your household ? Upon your honor and conscience, do 
you know the price of a pound of butter ? Can you say what 
sugar costs, and how much your family consumes and ought to 
consume .'' How much lard do you use in your house ? As I 
think on these subjects I own I hang down the head of shame. 
I suppose for a moment that you, who are reading this, are a 
middle-aged gentleman, and paterfamilias. Can you answer 
the above questions ? You know, sir, you cannot. Now turn • 
round, lay down the book, and suddenly ask Mrs. Jones and 
your daughters if they can answer? They cannot. They look 
at one another. They pretend they can answer. The}' can tell 
you the plot and principal characters of the last novel. Some 
of them know something about history, geology, and so forth. 
But of the natural history of home — Nichts, and for shame on 
you all 1 Hcmnis soyez ! For shame on you ? for shame on us ! 

In the early morning I hear a sort of call ox jo del under my 
window : and know 'tis the matutinal milkman leaving his can 
at my gate. O household gods ! have I lived all these years 
and don't know the price or the quantity of the milk which is 
delivered in that can ? Why don't I know ? As I live, if I live 
till to morrow morning, as soon as I hear the call of Lactantius, 
I will dash out upon him. How many cows ? How much milk, 
on an average, all the year round t What rent ? What cost of 
food and dairy servants .-' What loss of animals, and average 
cost of purchase ? If I interested myself properly about my 
pint (or hogshead, whatever it be) of milk, all this knowledge 
would ensue ; all this additional interest in life. What is this 
talk of my friend, Mr. Lewes, about objects at the sea-side, and 
so forth ? * Objects at the sea-side ? Objects at the area-bell : 
objects before my nose : objects which the butcher brings me 
in his tray : which the cook dresses and puts down before me, 
and over which I say grace ! My daily life is surrounded with 

* " Sea-side Studies." By G. H, Lewes. 



246 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

objects which ought to interest me. The pudding I eat (or 
refuse, that is neither here nor there ; and, between ourselves, 
what I have said about batter-pudding may be taken cum grano 
— we are not come to that yet, except for the sake of argument 
or illustration) — the pudding, I say, on my plate, the eggs that 
made it, the fire that cooked it, the table-cloth on which it is 
laid, and so forth — are each and all of these objects a knowl- 
edge of which I may "acquire — a knowledge of the cost and 
production of which I might advantageously learn ? To the 
man who does know these things, I say the interest of life is 
prodigiously increased. The milkman becomes a study to him ; 
the baker a being he curiously and tenderly examines. Go, 
Lewes, and clap a hideous sea anemone into a glass : I will put 
a cabman under mine, and make a vivisection of a butcher. 
O Lares, Penates, and gentle household gods, teach me to 
sympathize with all that comes within my doors ! Give me an 
interest in the butcher's book. Let me look forward to the 
ensuing number of the grocer's account with eagerness. It 
seems ungrateful to my kitchen chimney not to know the cost 
of sweeping it ; and I trust that many a man who reads this, 
and muses on it, will feel, like the writer, ashamed of himself, 
and hang down his head humbly. 

Now, if to this household game you could add a little money 
interest, the amusement would be increased far beyond the 
mere money value, as a game at cards for sixpence is better 
than a rubber for nothing. If you can interest yourself about 
sixpence, all life is invested with a new excitement. From 
sunrise to sleeping you can always be playing that game — with 
butcher, baker, coal-merchant, cabman, omnibus man — nay, 
diamond-merchant and stockbroker. You can bargain for a 
guinea over the price of a diamond necklace, or for a sixteenth 
per cent, in a transaction at the Stock Exchange. We all know 
men who have this faculty who are not ungenerous with their 
money. They give it on great occasions. They are more able 
to help than you and I who spend ours, and say to poor Prod- 
igal who comes to us out at elbow, " My dear fellow, I should 
have been delighted : but I have already anticipated my quarter, 
and am going to ask Screwby if he can do anything for me." 

In this delightful, wholesome, ever-novel twopenny game, 
there is a danger of excess, as there is in every other pastime 
or occupation of life. If you grow too eager for your two- 
pence, the acquisition or the loss of it may affect your peace of 
mind, and peace of mind is better than any amount of two- 
pences. My frii^nd, the old-clothes'-man, whose agonies over 



AUTOUR DE MON CHAPE AU. 



247 



the hat have led to this rambling disquisition, has, I very much 
fear, by a too eager pursuit of small profits, disturbed the 
equanimity of a mind that ought to be easy and happy. " Had 
I stood out," he thinks, " I might have had the hat for three- 
pence," and he doubts whether, having given fourpence for it, 
he will ever get back his money. M}^ good Shadrach, if you 
go through life passionately deploring the irrevocable, and 
allow yesterday's transactions to embitter the cheerfulness of 
to-day and to-morrow — as lief walk down to the Seine, souse 
in, hats, body, clothes-bag and all, and put an end to your sor- 
row and sordid cares. Before and since Mr. Franklin wrote 
his pretty apologue of the Whistle have we not all made bar- 
gains of which we repented, and coveted and acquired objects 
for which we have paid too dearly ? Who has not purchased 
his hat in some market or other ? There is General M'Clellan's 
cocked-hat for example : I dare say he was eager enough to 
wear it, and he has learned that it is by no means cheerful 
wear. There were the militaiy beavers of Messeigneurs of 
Orleans : * they wore them gallantly in the face of battle ; but 
I suspect they were glad enough to pitch them into the James 
River and come home in mufti. Ah, 77ies afiiis / a cJiacjin son 
schakot ! I was looking at a bishop the other day, and thinking, 
" My right reverend lord, that broad brim and rosette must 
bind your great broad forehead very tightly, and give you many 
a headache. A good easy wideawake were better for you, and 
I would like to see that honest face with a cutty-pipe in the 
middle of it." There is my Lord Mayor. My once dear lord, 
my kind friend, when your two years' reign was over, did not 
you jump for joy and fling your chapeau-bras out of window : 
and hasn't that hat cost you a pretty bit of money ? There, in 
a splendid travelling chariot, in the sweetest bonnet, all trimmed 
with orange blossoms and Chantilly lace, sits my Lady Rosa, 
with old Lord Snowdon by her side. Ah, Rosa ! what a price 
have you paid for that hat which you wear ; and is your lady- 
ship's coronet not purchased too dear? Enough of hats. Sir, 
or Madam, I take off mine, and salute you with profound 
.aspect. 

''■ Two cadets of the House of Orleans who served as Volunteers under General 
C'jiOan in his campaign against Richmond. 



248 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

ON ALEXANDRINES* 

A LETTER TO SOME COUNTRY COUSINS. 

Dear Cousins, — Be pleased to receive herewith a packet 
of Mayall's photographs, and copies of Illustrated News, Illus- 
trated Tillies, London Review, Queen, and Observer, each con- 
taining an account of the notable festivities of the past week. 
If, besides these remembrances of home, you have a mind to 
read a letter from an old friend, behold here it is. When I 
was at school, having left my parents in India, a good-natured 
captain or colonel would come sometimes and see us Indian 
boys, and talk to us about papa and mamma, and give us coins 
of the realm, and write to our parents, and say, " I drove over 
yesterday and saw Tommy at Dr. Birch's. I took him to the 
' George,' and gave him a dinner. His appetite is fine. He 
states that he is reading ' Cornelius Nepos,' with which he is 
much interested. His masters report," &c. And though Dr. 
Birch wrote by the same mail a longer, fuller, and official state- 
ment, I have no doubt the distant parents preferred the friend's 
letter, with its artless, possibly ungrammatical, account of their 
little darling. 

I have seen the young heir of Britain. These eyes have 
beheld him and his bride, on Saturday in Pall Mall, and on 
Tuesday in the nave of St. George's Chapel at Windsor, when 
the young Princess Alexandra of Denmark passed by with her 
blooming procession of bridesmaids ; and half an hour later, 
when the Princess of Wales came forth from the chapel, her 
husband by her side robed in the purple mantle of the famous 
Order which his forefather established here five hundred years 
ago. We were to see her yet once again, when her open car- 
riage passed out of the Castle gate to the station of the near 
railway which was to convey her to Southampton. 

Since womankind existed, has any woman ever had such a 
greeting ? At ten hours' distance, there is a city far more magni- 
ficent til an ours. With every respect for Kensington turnpike, I 
own that the Arc de I'Etoile at Paris is a much finer entrance to 
an imperial capital. In our black, orderless, zigzag streets, we 
can show nothing to compare with the magnificent array of the 

•This paper, it is almost needless to say, was written just after the marriage of the 
Prince and Princess of Wales in March, 1863. 



ON ALEXANDRINES. 



249 



Rue de Rivoli, that enormous regiment of stone stretching for 
five miles and presenting arms before tlie Tuileries. Think of 
the late Fleet Prison and Waithman's Obelisk, and of the Place 
de la Concorde and the Luxor Stone ! " The finest site in 
Europe," as Trafalgar Square has been called by some obstinate 
British optimist, is disfigured by trophies, fountains, columns, and 
statues so puerile, disorderly, and hideous that a lover of the arts 
must hang the head of shame as he passes to see our deai old 
queen city arraying herself so absurdly ; but when all is said and 
done, we can show one or two of the greatest sights in the world. 
I doubt if any Roman festival was as vast or striking as the 
Derby day, or if any Imperial triumph could show such a pro- 
digious muster of faithful people as our young Princess saw on 
Saturday, when the nation turned out to greet her. The cal- 
culators are squabbling about the numbers of hundreds of thou- 
sands, of millions, who came forth to see her and bid her wel- 
come. Imagine beacons flaming, rockets blazing, yards 
manned, ships and forts saluting with their thunder, every 
steamer and vessel, every town and village from Ramsgate to 
Gravesend, swarming with happy gratulation ; young girls with 
flowers, scattering roses before her ; staid citizens and aldermen 
pushing and squeezing and panting to make the speech, and 
bow the knee, and bid her welcome ! Who is this who is hon- 
ored with such a prodigious triumph, and received with a wel- 
come so astonishing ? A year ago we had never heard of her. 
I think about her pedigree and family not a few of us are in 
the dark still, and I own, for my part, to be much puzzled by 
the allusions of newspaper genealogists and bards and skalds 
to Vikings, Berserkers, and so forth. But it would be interest- 
ing to know how many hundreds of thousands of photographs of 
the fair bright face have by this time made it beloved and familiar 
in British homes. Think of all the quiet country nooks from 
Land's End to Caithness, where kind eyes have glanced at it. 
The farmer brings it home from market ; the curate from his 
visit to the Cathedral town ; the rustic folk peer at it in the 
little village shop-window ; the squire's children gaze on it round 
the drawing-room table : every eye that beholds it looks ten- 
derly on its bright beauty and sweet artless grace, and young 
and old pray God bless her. We have an elderly friend (a 
certain Goody Twoshoes) who inhabits, with many other old 
ladies, the Union House of the Parish of St. Lazarus in Soho. 
One of your cousins from this house went to see her, and found 
Goody and her companion crones all in a flutter of excitement 
about the marriage. The whitewashed walls of their bleak 



250 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



dormitory were ornamented with prints out of the illustrated 
journals, and hung with festoons and true-lovers' knots of tape 
and colored paper ; and the old bodies had had a good dinner, 
and the old tongues were chirping and clacking away, all eager, 
interested, sympathizing ; and one very elderly and rheumatic 
Goody, who is obliged to keep her bed, (and has, I trust, an 
exaggerated idea of the cares attending on royalty,) said, " Pore 
thing, pore thing ! I pity her." Yes, even in that dim place 
there was a little brightness and a quavering huzza, a contribu- 
tion of a mite subscribed by those dozen poor old widows to 
the treasure of loyalty with which the nation endows the 
Prince's bride. 

Three hundred years ago, when our dread Sovereign Lady 
Elizabeth came to take possession of her realm and capital 
city, Holingshed, if you please (whose pleasing history of course 
you carry about with you,) relates in his fourth volume folio, 
that — "At hir entring the citie, she was of the people received 
maruellous intierlie, as appeared by the assemblies, praiers, 
welcommings, cries, and all other signes which argued a woonder- 
full earnest loue : " and at various halting-places on the royal 
progress children habited like angels appeared out of allegoric 
edifices and spoke verses to her — 

" Welcome, O Queen, ns much as heart can think, 

Welcome again, as much as tongue can tell, 
Welcome to joyous tongues and hearts that will not shrink. 

God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well ! " 

Our new Princess, you may be sure, has also had her Alex- 
andrines, and many minstrels have gone before her singing her 
praises. Mr. Tupper, who begins in very great force and 
strength, and who proposes to give her no less than eight hun- 
dred thousand welcomes in the first twenty lines of his ode, is 
not satisfied with this most liberal amount of acclamation, but 
proposes at the end of his poem a still more magnificent sub- 
scription. Thus we begin, " A hundred thousand welcomes, a 
hundred thousand welcomes." (In my copy the figures are in 
the well-known Arabic numerals, but let us have the numbers 
literally accurate :) — 



'■ A hundred thousand welcomes ! 
A hundred thousand welcomes! 

And a hundred thousand more ! 
O happy heart of England, 
Shout aloud and sing, land, 
As no land sang before ; 
And let the pseans soar 
And ring from shore to shore, 
A hundred thousand welcomes, 
And a hundred thousand more ; 



And let tne cannons roar 
The joy-stunned city o'er. 
And let the steeples chime it 
A hundred thousand welcomes 
And a hundred thousand more ; 
And let the people rhyme it 
From neighbor's door to door, 
From every man's heart's core, 
A hundred thousand welcomes 
And a hundred thousand more." 



ON ALEXANDRINES. 



25» 



This contribution, in twenty not long" lines, of 900,000 (say 
nine hundred thousand) welcomes is handsome indeed : and 
shows that when our bard is inclined to be liberal, he does not 
look to the cost. But what is a sum of 900,000 to his further 
proposal ? — 



" O let all these declare it, 
Let miles of shouting swear it, 

In all the years of yore, 

Unparalleled before ! 
And thou, most welcome Wand'rer 

Across tlie Northern Water, 
Our Eng:land's Alexandra, 

Our dear adopted daughter — 



Lay to thine heart, conned o'er and o'er 
111 future years remembered well, 
The magic feivor of this spell 

That shakes the lar.d from' shore to shore, 

And makes all hearts and eyes brim o'er; 
Our hundred thousand welcomes. 
Our fifty niillion welcomes, 

And a hundred million more ! " 



Here we have, besides the most liberal previous subscrip- 
tion, a further call on the public for no less than one hundred 
and fifty million one hundred thousand welcomes for her Royal 
Highness. How much is this per head for all of us in the 
three kingdoms ? Not above five welcomes apiece, and I am 
sure many of us have given more than five hurrahs to the fair 
young Princess. 

Each man sings according to his voice, and gives in propor- 
tion to his means. The guns at Sheerness " from their ada- 
mantine lips" (which had spoken in quarrelsome old times a 
very different language), roared a hundred thundering welcomes 
to the fair Dane. The maidens of England strewed roses be- 
fore her feet at Gravesend when she landed. Mr. Tupper, with 
the million and odd welcomes, may be compared to the thun- 
dering fleet ; Mr. Chorley's song, to the flowerets scattered on 
her Royal Highness's happy and carpeted path : — 

" Blessings on that fair face ! 

Safe on the shore 
Of her home-dwelling place, 

Stranger no more, 
Love, from her household shrinCi 

Keep sorrow far ! 
May for her hawthorn twine, 

June bring sweet eglantine, 
Autumn, the golden vine, 

Dear Northern Star I " 

Hawthorn for May, eglantine for June, and in autumn a little 
tass of the golden vine for our Northern Star. I am sure no 
one will grudge the Princess these simple enjoyments, and of 
the produce of the last-named pleasing plant, I wonder how 
many bumpers were drunk to her health on the happy day of 
her bridal ? As for the Laureate's verses, I would respectfully 
liken his Highness to a giant showing a beacon torch on " a 
windy headland." His flaring torch is a pine-tree, to be sure, 
which nobody can wield but himself. He waves it : and four 



*52 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



times in the midnight he shouts mightily, *' Alexandra ! " and 
the Pontic pine is whirled into the ocean and Enceladus goes 
home. 

Whose muse, whose cornemuse, sounds with such plaintive 
sweetness from Arthur's Seat, while Edinburgh and Mussel- 
burgh lie rapt in delight, and the mermaids come flapping up to 
Leith shore to hear the exquisite music ? Sweeter piper Edina 
knows not than Aytoun, the Bard of the Cavaliers, who has 
given in his frank adhesion to the reigning dynasty. When a 
most beautiful, celebrated and unfortunate princess whose 
memory the Professor loves — when Mary, wife of Francis the 
Second, King of France, and by her own right proclaimed 
Queen of Scotland and England (poor soul !), entered Paris 
with her young bridegroom, good Peter Ronsard wrote of her — 

" Toi qui as veu I'excellence de celle 
Qui rend le ciel de I'Kscosse envieux, 
Dy hardiment, contentez vous mes yeux, 
Vous ne verrez jamais chose plus belle."* 

" Vous ne verrez jamais chose phis belle.'^ Here is an Alex- 
andrine written three hundred years ago, as simple as honjour. 
Professor Aytoun is more ornate. After elegantly compliment- 
ing the spring, and a description of her Royal Highness's well- 
known ancestors the " Berserkers," he bursts forth — 

" The Rose of Denmark comes, the Royal Bride ! 
O loveliest Rose ! our paragon and pride — 
Choice of the Prince whom England holds so dear— 
What homage shall we pay 
To one who has no peer? 
What can the bard or wildered minstrel say 
More than the peasant who on bended knee 
Breathes from his heart an earnest prayer for thee? 
Words are not fair, if that they would express 
Is fairer still ; so lovers in dismay 
Stand all abashed before that loveliness 
They worship most, but find no words to pray. 
Too sweet for incense ! (bravo .') Take our loves instead- 
Most freely, truly, and devoutly given ; 
Our prayer for blessings on that gentle head, 
For earthly happiness and rest in Heaven! 
May never sorrow dim those dove-like eyes, 
But peace as pure as reigned in Paradise, 
Calm and untainted on creation's eve, 
Attend thee still ! May holy angels," &c. 

This is all very well, my dear country cousins. But will you 
say " Amen " to this prayer ? I won't. Assuredly our fair 
Princess will shed many tears out of the " dove-like eyes " or 
the heart will be little worth. Is she to know no parting, no 
care, no anxious longing, no tender watches by the sick, to de- 

* Quoted in Mignet's " Life of Mary." 



ON ALEXANDRINES. 



253 



plore no friends and kindred, and feel no grief ? Heaven for- 
bid ! When a bard or wildered minstrel writes so, best accept 
his own confession that he is losing his head. On the day of 
her entrance into London who looked more bright and happy 
than the Princess ? On the day of the marriage, the fair face 
wore its marks of care already, and looked out quite grave, and 
frightened almost, under the wreaths and lace and orange- 
flowers. Would you have had her feel no tremor ? A maiden 
on the bridegroom's threshold, a Princess led up to the steps of 
a throne ! I think her pallor and doubt became her as well as 
her smiles. That, I can tell you, was our vote who sat in X 
compartment, let us say, in the nave of St. George's Chapel at 
Windsor, and saw a part of one of the brightest ceremonies ever 
performed there. 

My dear cousin Mary, you have an account of the dresses ; 
and I promise you there were princesses besides the bride whom 
it did the eyes good to behold. Around the bride sailed a bevy 
of young creatures so fair, white, and graceful that I thought of 
those fairy-tale beauties who are sometimes princesses, and 
sometimes white swans. The Royal Princesses and the Royal 
Knights of the Garter swept by in prodigious robes and trains 
of purple velvet, thirty shillings a yard, my dear, not of course 
including the lining, which, I have no doubt, was of the richest 
satin, or that costly " miniver " which we used to read about in 
poor Jerrold's writings. The young princes were habited in 
kilts ; and by the side of the Princess Royal trotted such a little 
wee solemn Highlander ! He is the young heir and chief of 
the famous clan of Brandenburg. His eyrie is amongst the 
Eagles, and I pray no harm may befall the dear little chieftain. 

The heralds in their tabards were marvellous to behold, and 
a nod from Rouge Croix gave me the keenest gratification. I 
tried to catch Garter's eye, but either I couldn't or he wouldn't. 
In his robes, he is like one of the Three Kings in old missal 
illuminations. Goldstick in waiting is even more splendid. 
With his gold rod and robes and trappings of many colors, he 
looks like a royal enchanter, and as if he had raised up all this 
scene of glamor by a wave of his glittering wand. The silver 
trumpeters wear such quaint caps, as those I have humbly tried 
to depict on the playful heads of children. Behind the trump- 
eters came a drum-bearer, on whose back a gold-laced drummer 
drubbed his march. 

When the silver clarions had blown, and under a clear 
chorus of white-robed children chanting round the organ, the 
noble procession passed into the chapel, and was hidden from 



ZS4 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



our.sight for a while, there was silence, or from the inner chapel 
ever so faint a hum. Then hymns arose, and in the lull we 
knew that prayers were being said, and the sacred rite per- 
formed which joined Albert Edward to Alexandra his wife. I 
am sure hearty prayers were offered outside the gate as well as 
within for that princely young pair, and for their Mother and 
Queen. The peace, the freedom, the happiness, the order which 
her rule guarantees, are part of my birthright as an Englishman, 
and I bless God for my share. Where else shall I find such 
liberty of action, thought, speech, or laws which protect me so 
well ? Her part of her compact with her people, what sovereign 
ever better performed ? If ours sits apart from the festivities of 
the day, it is because she suffers from a grief so recent that the 
loyal heart cannot master it as yet, and remains trcu nnd fcst to 
a beloved memory. A part of the music which celebrates the 
day's service was composed by the husband who is gone to the 
place where the just and pure of life meet the reward promised 
by the Father of all of us to good and faithful servants who 
have done well here below. As this one gives in his account, 
surely we may remember how the Prince was the friend of all 
peaceful arts and learning ; how he was true and fast always to 
duty, home, honor ; how, through a life of complicated trials, he 
was sagacious, righteous, active and self-denying. And as we 
trace in the young faces of his many children the father's 
features and likeness, what Englishman will not pray that they 
may have inherited also some of the great qualities which won 
for the Prince Consort the love and respect of our country ? 

The papers tell us how, on the night of the marriage of the 
Prince of Wales, all over England and Scotland illuminations 
were made, the poor and children were feasted, and in village 
and city thousands of kindly schemes were devised to mark the 
national happiness and sympathy. " The bonfire on Copt- 
point at Folkestone was seen in France," the Telegraph says, 
" more clearly than even the French marine lights could be seen 
at Folkestone." Long may the fire continue to burn ! There 
are European coasts (and inland places) where the liberty light 
has been extinguished, or is so low that you can't see to read 
by it — there are great Atlantic shores where it flickers and 
smokes very gloomily. Let us be thankful to the honest 
guardians of ours, avid for the kind sky under which it burns 
bright and steady. 



ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. 255 



ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. 

Before me lies a coin bearing the image and superscription 
of King George IV., and of the nominal value of two-and- 
sixpence. But an official friend at a neighboring turnpike saj's 
the piece is hopelessly bad ; and a chemist tested it, returning 
a like unfavorable opinion. A cabman, who had brought me 
from a Club, left it with the Club porter, appealing to the gent 
who gave it a pore cabby, at ever so much o'clock of a rainy 
night, which he hoped he would give him another. I have 
taken that cabman at his word. He has been provided with a 
sound coin. The bad piece is on the table before me, and shall 
have a hole drilled through it, as soon as this essay is written, 
by a loyal subject who does not desire to deface the Sovereign's 
image, but to protest against the rascal who has taken his name 
in vain. Fid. Def. indeed ! Is this what you call defending 
the faith ? You dare to forge your Sovereign's name, and pass 
your scoundrel pewter as his silver ? I wonder who you are, 
wretch and most consummate trickster ? This forgery is so 
complete that even now I am deceived by it — I can't see the 
difference between the base and sterling metal. Perhaps this 
piece is a little lighter ; — I don't know, A little softer : — is it ? 
I have not bitten it, not being a connoisseur in the tasting of 
pewter or silver. I take the word of three honest men, though 
it goes against me : and though I have given two-and-sixpence 
worth of honest consideration for the counter, I shall not at- 
tempt to implicate anybody else in my misfortune, or transfer 
my ill-luck to a deluded neighbor. 

I say the imitation is so curiously successful, the stamping, 
milling of the edges, lettering, and so forth, are so neat, that 
even now, when my eyes are open, I cannot see the cheat. 
How did those experts, the cabman, and pikeman, and trades- 
man, come to find it out ? How do they happen to be more 
familiar with pewter and silver than I am .'' You see, I put out 
of the question another point which I might argue without fear 
of defeat, namely, the cabman's statement that I gave him this 
bad piece of money. Suppose every cabman who took me a 
shilling fare were to drive away and return presently with a bad 
coin and an assertion that I had given it to him ! This would 
be absurd and mischievous ; an encouragement of vice amongst 



256 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

men who already are subject to temptations. Being homo, I 
think if I were a cabman myself, I might sometimes stretch 
a furlong or two in my calculation of distance. But don't 
come twice, my man, and tell me I have given you a bad 
half-crown. No, no ! I have paid once like a gentleman, and 
once is enough. For instance, during the Exhibition time I 
was stopped by an old country-woman in black, with a huge 
umbrella, who, bursting into tears, said to me, " Master, be 
this the way to Harlow, in Essex ? This the way to Harlow ? 
This is the way to Exeter, my good lady, and you will arrive 
there if you walk about 170 miles in your present direction," 
I answered courteously, replying to the old creature. Then she 
fell a-sobbing as though her old heart would break. She had a 
daughter a-dying at Harlow. She had walked already " vifty- 
dree mile that day." Tears stopped the rest of her discourse, 
so artless, genuine, and abundant that — I own the truth — I 
gave her, in I believe genuine silver, a piece of the exact size 
of that coin which forms the subject of this essay. Well. 
About a month since, near to the very spot where I had met 
my old woman, I was accosted by a person in black, a person 
in a large draggled cap, a person with a huge umbrella, who was 
beginning, " 1 say. Master, can you tell me if this be the way 

to Har " but here she stopped. Her eyes goggled wildly. 

She started from me, as Macbeth turned from Macduff. She 
would not engage with me. It was my old friend of Harlow, 
in Essex. I dare say she has informed many other people of 
her daughter's illness, and her anxiety to be put upon the right 
way to Harlow. Not long since a very gentlemanlike man, 
Major Delamere let us call him (I like the title of Major very 
much), requested to see me, named a dead gentleman who 
he said had been our mutual friend, and on the strength of this 
mutual acquaintance, begged me to cash his check for five 
pounds ! 

It is these things, my dear sir, which serve to make a man 
cynical. I do conscientiously believe that had I cashed the 
Major's check there would have been a difficulty about 
payment on the part of the respected bankers on whom he 
drew. On your honor and conscience, do you think that old 
widow who was walking from Tunbridge Wells to Harlow had 
a daughter ill, and was an honest woman at all ? The daughter 
couldn't always, you see, be being ill, and her mother on her way 
to her dear child through Hyde Park, In the same way some 
habitual sneerei's may be inclined to hint that the cabman's story 
was an invention — or at any rate, choose to ride off (so to speak) 



ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



257 



on the doubt. No. My opinion, I own, is unfavorable as 
regards the widow from Tunbridge Wells, and Major Dela- 
mere ; but, believing the cabman was honest, I am glad to 
think he was not injured by the reader's most humble servant. 

What a queer, exciting life this rogue's march must be : this 
attempt of the bad half-crowns to get into circulation ! Had 
my distinguished friend the Major knocked at many doors that 
morning, before operating on mine ? The sport most be some- 
thing akin to the pleasure of tiger or elephant hunting. What 
ingenuity the sportsman must have in tracing his prey — what 
daring and caution in coming upon him ! What coolness in 
facing the angry animal (for, after all, a man on whom you 
draw a check a bout port atit will be angry). What a delicious 
thrill of triumph, if you can bring him down ! If I have money 
at the banker's and draw for a portion of it over the counter, 
that is mere prose — any dolt can do that. But, having no 
balance, say I drive up in a cab, present a check at Coutts's, 
and, receiving the amount, drive ofif .'' What a glorious morn- 
ing's sport that has been ! How superior in excitement to the 
common transactions of every-day life 1****1 must tell a 
story ; it is against myself, I know, but it will out, and per^ 
haps my mind will be the easier. 

More than twenty years ago, in an island remarkable for 
its verdure, I met four or five times one of the most agreeable 
companions with whom I have passed a night. I heard that 
evil times had come upon this gentleman ; and, overtaking him 
in a road near my own house one evening, I asked him to come 
home to dinner. In two days, he was at my door again. At 
breakfast-time was this second appearance. He was in a cab 
(of course he was in a cab, they always are, these unfortunate, 
these courageous men). To deny myself was absurd. My 
friend could see me over the parlor blinds, surrounded by my 
family, and cheerfully partaking of the morning meal. Might 
he have a word with me ? and can you imagine its purport ? 
By the most provoking delay, his uncle the admiral not being 
able to come to town till Friday — would I cash him a check ? 
I need not say it would be paid on Saturday without fail. I 
tell you that man went away with money in his pocket, and I 
regret to add that his gallant relative has not come to town yet t 

Laying down the pen, and sinking back in my chair, here, 
perhaps, I fall into a five minutes' reverie; and think of one, 
two, three, half a dozen cases in which I have been content to 
accept that sham promissory coin in return for sterling money 
advanced. Not a reader, whatever his age, but could tell a; 

17 



258 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

like story. I vow and believe there are men of fifty, who will 
dine well to-day who have not paid their school debts yet, and 
who have not taken up their long-protested promises to pay. 
Tom, Dick, Harry, my boys, I owe you no grudge, and rather 
relish that wince witli which you will read these meek lines and 
say, " He means me." Poor Jack in Hades ! Do you remem- 
ber a certain pecuniary transaction, and a little sum of money 
you borrowed " until the meeting of Parliament ? " Parliament 
met often in your lifetime : Parliament has met since : but I 
think I should scarce be more surprised if your ghost glided 
into the room now,, and laid down the amount of your little 
account, than I should have been if you had paid me in your 
lifetime with the actual acceptances of the Bank of England. 
You asked to borrow, but you never intended to pay. I would 
as soon have believed that a promissory note of Sir John Fal- 
stafif (accepted by Messrs. Bardolph and Nym, and payable in 
Aldgate,) would be as sure to find payment, as that note of the 
departed — nay, lamented Jack Thriftless. 

He who borrows, meaning to pay, is quite a different person 
from the individual here described. Many — most, I hope — 
took Jack's promise for what it was worth — and quite well 
knew that when he said, " Lend me," he meant " Give me " 
twenty pounds. " Give me change for this half-crown," said 
Jack ; " I know it's a pewter piece ; " and you gave him the 
change in honest silver, and pocketed the counterfeit gravely. 

What a queer conciousness that must be which accompanies 
such a man in his sleeping, in his waking, in his walk through 
life, by his fireside with his children round him ? " For what 
we are going to receive," &c. — he says grace before his dinner. 
" My dears ! Shall I help you to some mutton ? I robbed the 
butcher of the meat. I don't intend to pay him. Johnson my 
boy, a glass of champagne ? Very good, isn't it ? Not too 
sweet. Forty six. I get it from so-and-so, whom I intend to 
cheat." As eagles go forth and bring home to their eaglets 
the lamb or their pavid kid, I say they are men who live and 
victual their nests by plunder. We all know highway robbers 
in white neckcloths, domestic bandits, marauders, passers of 
bad coin. What was yonder check which Major Delamere 
proposed I should cash but a piece of bad money ? What was 
Jack Thriftless's promise to pay ? Having got his booty, I 
fancy Jack or the Major returning home, and wife and children 
gathering about him. Poor wife and children ! They respect 
papa very likely. They don't know he is false coin. Maybe 
tiie wife has a dreadful inkling of the truth, and, sickening, tries 



ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



259 



to hide it from the daughters and sons. Maybe she is an ac- 
complice : herself a brazen forger)'. If Turpin and Jack Shep- 
pard were married, very likely Mesdames Sheppard and Turpin 
did not know, at first, what their husbands' real profession 
was, and fancied, when the men left home in the morning, they 
only went away to follow some regular and honorable business. 
Then a suspicion of the truth may have come : then a dread- 
ful revelation ; and presently we have the guilty pair robbing 
together, or passing forged money each on his own account. 
You know Doctor Dodd ? I wonder whether his wife knows 
that he is a forger, and scoundrel t Has she had any of the 
plunder, think you, and were the darling children's new dresses 
bought with it ? The Doctor's sermon last Sunday was cer- 
tainly charming, and we all cried. Ah, my poor Dodd I Whilst 
he is preaching most beautifully, pocket-handkerchief in hand, 
he is peering over the pulpit cushions, looking out piteously 
for Messrs. Peachum and Lockit from the police-office. By 
Doctor Dodd you understand I would typify the rogue of re- 
spectable exterior, not committed to jail yet, but not undis- 
covered. We all know one or two such. This very sermon 
perhaps will be read by some, or more likely — for, depend upon 
it, your solemn hypocritic scoundrels don't care much for light 
literature — more likely, I say, this discourse will be read by 
some of their wives, who think, "Ah mercy! does that horrible 
cynical wretch know how my poor husband blacked my eye, or 
abstracted mamma's silver teapot, or forced me to write So-and- 
so's name on that piece of stamped paper, or what not .'' " My 
good creature, I am not angry with you. If your husband has 
broken your nose, you will vow that he had authority over your 
person, and a right to demolish any part of it : if he has con- 
veyed away your mamma's teapot, you will say that she gave it 
to him at your marriage, and it was very ugly, and what not? 
if he takes your aunt's watch, and you love him, you will carry 
it ere long to the pawnbroker's, and perjure yourself — oh, how 
you will perjure yourself — in the witness-box ! I know this is 
a degrading view of woman's noble nature, her exalted mission, 
and so forth, and so forth. I know you will say this is bad 
morality. Is it ? Do you, or do you not, expect your woman- 
kind to stick by you for better or for worse ? Say I have 
committed a forgery, and the officers come in search of me, is 
my, wife, Mrs. Dodd, to show them into the dining-room and say, 
" Pray step in, gentlemen ! My husband has just come home 
from church. That bill with my Lord Chesterfield's accept- 
ance, I am bound to own, was never written by his lordship, 



26o RO UND ABOUT PA PERS. 

and the signature is in the doctor's handwriting?" I say, 
would any man of sense and honor, or fine feeling, praise his 
wife for telling the truth under such circumstances ? Suppose 
she had made a fine grimace, and said, " Most painful as my 
position is, most deeply as I feel for my William, yet truth 
must prevail, and I deeply lament to state that the beloved 
partner of my life did commit the flagitious act with which he 
is charged, and is at this present moment located in the two- 
pair back, up the chimney, whither it is my duty to lead you." 
Why, even Dodd himself, who was one of the greatest humbugs 
who ever lived, would not have had the face to say that he ap- 
proved of his wife telling the truth in such a case. Would you 
have had Flora Macdonald beckon the officers, saying, " This 
way, gentlemen ! You will find the young chevalier asleep in 
that cavern." Or don't you prefer her to be spleiidide mejidax, 
and ready at all risks to save him ? If ever I lead a rebellion, 
and my women betray me, may I be hanged but I will not for- 
give them : and if ever I steal a teapot, and my women don't 
stand up for me, pass the article under their shawls, whisk down 
the street with it, outbluster the policeman, and utter any 
amount of fibs before Mr. Beak, those beings are not what I 
take them to be, and — for a fortune — I won't give them so 
much as a bad half-crown. 

Is conscious guilt a source of unmixed pain to the bosom 
which harbors it ? Has not your criminal, on the contrary, an 
excitement, an enjoyment within quite unknown to you and me 
who never did anything wrong in your lives ? The housebreaker 
must snatch a fearful joy as he walks unchallenged by the 
policeman with his sack full of spoons and tankards. Uo not 
cracksmen, when assembled together, entertain themselves with 
stories of glorious old burglaries which they or by-gone heroes 
have committed ? But that my age is mature and my habits 
formed, I should really just like to try a little criminality. 
Fancy passing a forged bill to your banker ; calling on a friend 
and sweeping his sideboard of plate, his hall of umbrellas and 
coats ; and then going home to dress for dinner, say — and to 
meet a bishop, a judge, and a police magistrate or so, and talk 
more morally than any man at table ! How I should chuckle 
(as my host's spoons clinked softly in my pocket) whilst I was 
uttering some noble speech about virtue, duty, charity ! I 
wonder do we meet garotters in society ? In an average tea- 
party, now, how many returned convicts are there ? Does John 
Footman, when he asks permission to go and spend the even- 
ing with some friends, pass his time in thuggee ; waylay and 



ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. 261 

Strangle an old gentleman, or two ; let himself into your 
house, with the house-key of course, and appear as usual with 
the shaving-water when you ring your bell in the morning ? 
The very possibility of such a suspicion invests John with a 
new and romantic interest in my mind. Behind the grave 
politeness of his countenance I try and read the lurking 
treason. Full of this pleasing subject, I have been talking 
thief-stories with a neighbor. The neighbor tells me how 
some friends of hers used to keep a jewel-box under a bed 
in their room ; and, going into the room, they thought they 
heard a noise under the bed. They had the courage to look. 
The cook was under the bed — under the bed with the jewel- 
box. Of course she said she had come for purposes connected 
with her business ; but this was absurd. A cook under a bed 
is not there for professional purposes. A relation of mine had 
a box containing diamonds under her bed, which diamonds she 
told me were to be mine. Mine ! One day, at dinner-time, 
between the entre'es and the roast, a cab drove away from my 
relative's house containing the box wherein lay the diamonds. 
John laid the dessert, brought the coffee, waited all the evening 
— and oh, how frightened he was when he came to learn that 
his mistress's box had been conveyed out of her own room, and 
it contained diamonds — " Law bless us, did it now?" I won- 
der whether John's subsequent career has been prosperous? 
Perhaps the gentlemen from Bow Street were all in the wrong 
when they agreed in suspecting John as the author of the 
robbery. His noble nature was hurt at the suspicion. You 
conceive he would not like to remain in a family where they 
were mean enough to suspect him of stealing a jewel-box out 
of a bedroom — and the injured man and my relatives soon 
parted. But, inclining (with my usual cynicism) to think that 
he did steal the valuables, think of his life for the month or two 
whilst he still remains in the service ! He shows the officers 
over the house, agrees with them that the coup must have been 
made by persons familiar with it ; gives them every assistance ; 
pities his master and mistress with a manly compassion ; points 
out what a cruel misfortune it is to himself as an honest man, 
with his living to get and his family to provide for, that this 
suspicion should fall on him. Finally, he takes leave of his 
place, with a deep though natural melancholy that ever he had 
accepted it. What's a thousand pounds to gentlefolks ! A loss 
certainly, but they will live as well without the diamonds as 
with them. But to John his Hhhonor was worth more than 
diamonds, his Hhonor was. Whohever is to give him back his 



262 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

character ? Who is to prevent hany one from saying, " Ho yes. 
This is the footman which was in the family where the diamonds 
was stole ? " &c. 

I wonder has John prospered in life subsequently ? If he 
is innocent, he does not interest me in the least. The interest 
of the case lies in John's behavior supposing him to be guilty. 
Imagine the smiling face, the daily service, the orderly per- 
formance of duty, whilst within John is suffering pangs lest 
discovery should overtake him. Every bell of the door which 
he is obliged to open may bring a police-officer. The accom- 
plices may peach. What an exciting life John's must have been 
for a while. And now, years and years after, when pursuit has 
long ceased, and detection is impossible, does he ever revert 
to the little transaction .'' Is it possible those diamonds cost a 
thousand pounds .'' What a rogue the fence must have been 
who only gave him so and so ! And I pleasingly picture to 
myself an old ex-footman and an ancient receiver of stolen 
goods meeting and talking over this matter, which dates from 
times so early that her present ]\Iajesty's fair image could only 
just have begun to be coined or forged. 

I choose to take John at the time when his little peccadillo 
is suspected, perhaps, but when there is no specific charge of 
robbery against him. He is not yet convicted : he is not even 
on his trial ; how then can we venture to say he is guilty ? Now 
think what scores of men and women walk the world in a like 
predicament ; and what false coin passes current ! Pinchbeck 
strives to pass off his history as sound coin. He knows it is 
only base metal, washed ever with a thin varnish of learning. 
Poluphloisbos puts his sermons in circulation : sounding brass, 
lackered over with white metal, and marked with the stamp 
and image of piety. What say you to Drawcansir's reputation 
as a military commander .-' to Tibbs's pretensions to be a fine 
gentleman t to Sapphira's claims as a poetess, or Rodoessa's as 
a beauty ? His bravery, his piety, high birth, genius, beauty — 
each of these deceivers would palm his falsehood on us, and 
have us accept his forgeries as sterling coin. And we talk 
here, please to observe, of weaknesses rather than crimes. 
Some of us have more serious things to hide than a yellow 
cheek behind a raddle of rouge, or a white poll under a wig of 
jetty curls. You know, neighbor, there are not only false teeth 
in this world, but false tongues : and some make up a bust and 
an appearance of strength with padding, cotton, and what not ? 
while another kind of artist tries to take you in by wearing 
under his waistcoat, and perpetually thumping, an immense 



"STRANGE TO SAY, ON CLUB PAPER."' 263 

sham heart. Dear sir, may yours and mine be found, at the 
right time, of the proper size and in the right place. 

And what has this to do with half-crowns, good or bad ? Ah, 
friend ! may our coin, battered, and clipped, and defaced though 
it be, be proved to be Sterling Silver on the day of the Great 
Assay ! 



''STRANGE TO SAY, ON CLUB PAPERS 

Before the Duke of York's column, and between the 
" Athenaeum " and " United Service " Clubs, I have seen more 
than once, on the esplanade, a preacher holding forth to a little 
congregation of badauds and street-boys, whom he entertains 
with a discourse on the crimes of a rapacious aristocracy, or 
warns of the imminent peril of their own souls. Sometimes 
this orator is made to " move on " by brutal policemen. Some- 
times, on a Sunday, he points to a white head or two visible in 
the windows of the Clubs to the right and left of him, and 
volunteers a statement that those quiet and elderly Sabbath- 
breakers will very soon be called from this world to another, 
where their lot will by no means be so comfortable as that 
which the reprobates enjoy here, in their arm-chairs by their 
snug fires. 

At the end of last month, had I been a Pall Mall preacher. 
I would have liked to send a whip round to all the Clubs in St, 
James's, and convoke the few members remaining in London 
to hear a discourse sub Dio on a text from the Observer news- 
paper. I would have taken post under the statue of Fame, say, 
where she stands distributing wreaths to the three Crimean 
Guardsmen, (The crossing-sweeper does not obstruct the path, 
and I suppose is away at his villa on Sundays.) And, when 
the congregation was pretty quiet, I would have begun : — 

In the Observer oi the 27th September, 1863, in the fifth 
page and the fourth column, it is thus written : — 

" The codicil appended to the will of the late Lord Clyde, 
executed at Chatham, and bearing the signature of Clyde, F. 
M., is written, strange to say, on a sheet of paper bearing the 
'Athena; uffi Club ' marky 

What the codicil is, my dear brethren, it is not our business 
to inquire. It conveys a benefaction to a faithful and attached 



264 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

friend ot the good Field-Marshal. The gift may be a lac of 
rupees, or it may be a house and its contents — furniture, plate, 
and wine-cellar. My friends, I know the wine-merchant, and, 
for the sake of the legatee, hope heartily that the stock is 
large. 

Am I wrong, dear brethren, in supposing that you expect a 
preacher to say a seasonable word on death here. If you don't, 
I fear you are but little familiar with the habits of preachers, 
and are but lax hearers of sermons. We might contrast the 
vault where the warrior's remains lie shrouded and coffined, 
with that in which his worldly provision of wine is stowed aw'ay. 
Spain and Portugal and France — all the lands which supplied 
his store — as hardy and obedient subaltern, as resolute captain, 
as colonel daring but prudent — he has visited the fields of all. 
In India and China he marches always unconquered ; or at the 
head of his dauntless Highland brigade he treads the Crimean 
snow; or he rides from conquest' to conquest in India once 
more ; succoring his countrymen in the hour of their utmost 
need ; smiting down the scared mutiny, and trampling out 
the embers of rebellion ; at the head of an heroic army, a con- 
summate chief. And now his glorious old sword is sheathed, 
and his honors are won ; and he has bought him a house, and 
stored it with modest cheer for his friends (the good old man 
put water in his own wine, and a glass or two sufficed him) — 
behold the end comes, and his legatee inherits these modest 
possessions by virtue of a codicil to his lordship's will, w-ritten, 
*■'■ strange to saj>, upon a sheet of papC7' bearing tlie ^ Athenceum 
Club ' markr 

It is to this part of the text, my brethren, that I propose to 
address myself particularly, and if the remarks I make are 
offensive to any of you, you know the doors of our meeting- 
house are open, and you can walk out when you will. Around 
us are magnificent halls and palaces frequented by such a 
multitude of men as not even the Roman Forum assembled to- 
gether. Yonder are the Marlium and the Palladium. Next 
to the Palladium is the elegant Viatorium, which Barry grace- 
fully stole from Rome. By its side is the massive Reforma- 
torium : and the — the Ultratorium rears its granite columns 
beyond. Extending down the street palace after palace rises 
magnificent, and under their lofty roofs warriors and lawyers, 
merchants and nobles, scholars and seamen, the wealthy, the 
poor, the busy, the idle assemble. Into the halls built down 
this little street and its neighborhood the principal men of all 
London come to hear or impart the news ; and the affairs of 



"STRANGE TO SAY, ON CLUB PAPER." 265 

the state or of private individuals, the quarrels of empires or 
of authors, the movements of the court, or the splendid vaga- 
ries of fashion, the intrigues of statesmen or of persons of an- 
other sex yet more wily, the last news of the battles in the 
great occidental continents, nay, the latest betting for the horse- 
races, or the advent of a dancer at the theatre — all that men do 
is discussed in these Pall Mall agorae, where we of London 
daily assemble. 

Now among so many talkers, consider how many false 
reports must fly about : in such multitudes imagine how many 
disappointed men there must be ; how many chatterboxes ; 
how many feeble and credulous (whereof I mark some speci- 
mens in my congregation) ; how many mean, rancorous, prone 
to believe ill of their betters, eager to find fault ; and then, my 
brethren, fancy how the words of my text must have been read 
and received in Pall Mall ! (I perceive several of the congre- 
gation looking most uncomfortable. One old boy with a dyed 
mustache turns purple in the face, and struts back to the Mar- 
tium: another, with a shrug of the shoulder and a murmur of 
" Rubbish," slinks away in the direction of the Togatorium, 
and the preacher continues.) The will of Field-Marshal Lord 
Clyde — sign A at Chathatn, mind, where his lordship died — is 
written, stra?ige to say, on a sheet of paper bearing the " Athen- 
aeum Club " mark ! 

The inference is obvious. A man cannot get Athenaeum 
paper except at the " Athenaeum." Such paper is not sold at 
Chatham where the last codicil to his lordship's will is dated. 
And so the painful belief is forced upon us, that a Peer, a 
Field-Marshal, wealthy, respected, illustrious, could pocket 
paper at his Club, and carry it away with him to the country. 
One fancies the hall-porter conscious of the old lord's iniquity, 
and holding down his head as the Marshal passes the door. 
What is that roll which his lordship carries ? Is it his Marshal's 
baton gloriously won ? No ; it is a roll of foolscap conveyed 
from the Club. What has he on his breast, under his great- 
coat ? Is it his Star of India ? No ; it is a bundle of envelopes, 
bearing the head of Minerva, some sealing-wax, and a half- 
score of pens. 

Let us imagine how in the hall of one or other of these 
Clubs this strange anecdote will be discussed. 

"Notorious screw," says Sneer. "The poor old fellow's 
avarice has long been known. 

" Suppose he wishes to imitate the Duke of Marlborough," 
says Simper. 



266 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

" Habit of looting contracted in India, you know ; ain't so 
easy to get over, you know," says Snigger. 

" When officers dined with him in India," remarks Solemn, 
" it was notorious that the spoons were all of a different 
pattern." 

" Perhaps it isn't true. Suppose he wrote his paper at the 
Club ? " interposes Jones. 

" It is dated at Chatham, my good man," says Brown. " A 
man if he is in London says he is in London, A man if he is 
in Rochester says he is in Rochester. This man happens to 
forget that he is using the Club paper : and he happens to be 
found out : many men ^i:;;/V happen to be found out. I've seen 
literary fellows at Clubs writing their rubbishing articles ; I 
have no doubt they take away reams of paper. They crib 
thoughts; why shouldn't they crib stationery.'' One of your 
literary vagabonds who is capable of stabbing a reputation, who 
is capable of telling any monstrous falsehood to support his 
party, is surely capable of stealing a ream of paper." 

" Well, well, we have all our weaknesses," sighs Robinson. 
" Seen that article, Thompson, in the Observer about Lord 
Clyde and the Club paper? You'll find it up stairs. In the 
third column of the fifth page towards the bottom of the page. 
I suppose he was so poor he couldn't afford to buy a quire of 
paper. Hadn't fourpence in the world. Oh, no ! " 

" And they want to get up a testimonial to this man's mem- 
ory — a statue or something!" cries Jawkins. "A man who 
wallows in wealth and takes paper away from his Club ! I 
don't say he is not brave. Brutal courage most men have. 
I don't say he was not a good officer : a man with such ex- 
perience must have been a good officer, unless he was born 
fool. But to think of this man loaded with honors — though of 
a low origin — so lost to self-respect as actually to take away 
the 'Athenaeum' paper! These parvenus, sir, betray their 
origin — betray their origin. I said to my wife this very 
morning, ' Mrs. Jawkins,' I said, ' there is talk of a testi- 
monial to this man. I will not give one shilling. I have no 
idea of raising statues to fellows who take away Club paper. 
No, by George, I have not. Why, they will be raising statues 
to men who take Club spoons next ! Not one penny of my 
money shall they have ' " 

And now, if you please, we will tell the real story which has 
furnished this scandal to a newspaper, this tattle to Club 
gossips and loungers. The Field-Marshal, wishing to make a 
further provision for a friend, informed his lawyer what he 



"STRANGE TO SAY, ON CLUB PAPER. 267 

desired to do. The lawyer, a member of the " Athenaeum 
Club," there wrote the draft of such a codicil as he would ad- 
vise, and sent the paper by the post to Lord Clyde at Chatham, 
Lord Clyde, finding the paper perfectly satisfactory, signed it 
and sent it back : and hence we have the story of " the codicil 
bearing the signature of Clyde, F. M., and written, strange to 
say, upon paper bearing the ' Athenaeum Club ' mark." 

Here I have been imagining a dialogue between a half- 
dozen gossips such as congregate round a Club fireplace of an 
afternoon. I wonder how many people besides — whether any 
chance reader of this very page has read and believed this story 
about the good old lord ? Have the country papers copied the 
anecdote, and our " own correspondents " made their remarks 
on it .^ If, my good sir, or madam, you have read it and cred- 
ited it, don't you own to a little feeling of shame and sorrow, 
now that the trumpery little mystery is cleared ? To " the new 
inhabitant of light," passed away and out of reach of our cen- 
sure, misrepresentation, scandal, dulness, malice, a silly false- 
hood matters nothing. Censure and praise are alike to him — 

" The music warbling to the deafened ear, 
The incense wasted on the funeral bier," 

the pompous eulogy pronounced over the gravestone, or the lie 
that slander spits on it. Faithfully though this brave old chief 
did his duty, honest and upright though his life was, glorious 
his renown — you see he could write at Chatham on London 
paper ; you see men can be found to point out how " strange " 
his behavior was. 

And about ourselves ? My good people, do you by chance 
know any man or woman who has formed unjust conclusions 
regarding his neighbor.? Have you ever found yourself willing, 
nay, eager to believe evil of some man whom you hate ? Whom 
you hate because he is successful, and you are not : because he 
is rich, and you' are poor : because he dines with great men 
who don't invite you : because he wears a silk gown, and yours 
is still stuff : because he has been called in to perform the opera- 
tion though you lived close by : because his pictures have been 
bought, and yours returned home unsold : because he fills his 
church, and you are preaching to empty pews ? If your rival 
prospers, have you ever felt a twinge of anger ? If his wife's 
carriage passes you and Mrs. Tomkins, who are in a cab, don't 
you feel that those people are giving themselves absurd airs of 
importance t If he lives with great people, are you not sure he 
is a sneak ? And if you ever felt envy towards another, and if 



268 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

your heart has ever been black towards your brother, if you 
have been peevish at his success, pleased to liear his merit de- 
preciated, and eager to believe all that is said in his disfavor — 
my good sir, as you yourself contritely own that you are unjust, 
jealous, uncharitable, so you may be sure, some men are un- 
charitable, jealous, and unjust regarding ^(72/. 

The proofs and manuscript of this little sermon have just 
come from the printer's, and as I look at the writing, I perceive, 
not without a smile, that one or two of the pages bear, " strange 
to say," the mark of a Club of which I have the honor to be a 
member. Those lines quoted in a foregoing page are from 
some noble verses written by one of Mr. Addison's men, Mr. 
Tickell, on the death of Cadogan, who was amongst the most 
prominent " of Marlborough's captains and Eugenio's friends." 
If you are acquainted with the history of those times, you have 
read how Cadogan had his feuds and hatreds too, as Tickell's 
patron had his, as Cadogan's great chief had his. "The Duke 
of Marlborough's character has been so variously drawn " 
(writes a famous contemporary of the duke's), " that it is hard 
to pronounce on either side without the suspicion of flattery or 
detraction. I shall say nothing of his military accomplish- 
ments, which the opposite reports of his friends and enemies 
among the soldiers have rendered problematical. Those ma- 
ligners who deny him personal valor, seem not to consider that 
this accusation is charged at a venture, since the person of . a 
general is too seldom exposed, and that fear which is said some- 
times to have disconcerted him before action might probably 
be more for his army than himself." If Swift could hint a doubt 
of Marlborough's courage, what wonder that a nameless scribe 
of our dav should question the honor of Clyde t 



THE LAST SKETCH. 



Not many days since I went to visit a house where in 
former years I had received many a friendly welcome. We 
went into the owner's — an artist's — studio. Prints, pictures and 
sketches hung on the walls as I had last seen and remembered 
them. The implements of the painter's art were there. The 
light which had shown upon so many, many hours of patient 



THE LAST SKETCH. 269 

and cheerful toil, poured through the northern window upon 
print and bust, lay figure and sketch, and upon the easel before 
which the good, the gentle, the beloved Leslie labored. In this 
room the busy brain had devised, and the skilful hand executed, 
I know not how many of the noble works which have delighted 
the world with their beauty and charming humor. Here the 
poet called up into pictorial presence, and informed with life, 
grace, beauty, infinite friendly mirth and wondrous naturalness 
of expression, the people of whom his dear books told him the 
stories, — his Shakspeare, his Cervantes, his Moliere, his Le 
Sage. There was his last work on the easel — a beautiful fresh 
smiling shape of Titania, such as his sweet guileless fancy im- 
agined the Midsmnmer Nighfs queen to be. Gracious, and 
pure, and bright, the sweet smiling image glimmers on the can- 
vas. Fairy elves, no doubt, were to have been grouped around 
their mistress in laughing clusters. Honest Bottom's grotesque 
head and form are indicated as reposing by the side of the 
consummate beauty. The darkling forest would have grown 
around them, with the stars glittering from the midsummer sky : 
the flowers at the queen's feet, and the boughs and foliage about 
her, would have been peopled with gambolling sprites and fays. 
They were dwelling in the artist's mind no doubt, and would 
have been developed by that patient, faithful, admirable genius ; 
but the busy brain stopped working, the skilful hand fell lifeless, 
the loving, honest heart ceased to beat. What was she to 
have been — that fair Titania — when perfected by the patient 
skill of the poet, who in imagination saw the sweet innocent 
figure, and with tender courtesy and caresses, as it were, posed 
and shaped and traced the fair form ? • Is there record kept 
anywhere of fancies conceived, beautiful, unborn ? Some day 
will they assume form in some yet undeveloped light ? If our 
bad unspoken thoughts are registered against us, and are writ- 
ten in the awful account, will not the good thoughts unspoken, 
the love and tenderness, the pity, beauty, charity, which pass 
through the breast, and cause the heart to throb with silent 
good, find a remembrance too ? A few weeks more, and this 
lovely offspring of the poet's conception would have been com- 
plete — to charm the world with its beautiful mirth. May there 
not be some sphere unknown to us where it may have an ex- 
istence ? They say our words, once out of our lips, go travel- 
ling in omne cevum, reverberating for ever and ever. If our 
words, why not our thoughts ? If the Has Been, why not the 
Might Have Been ? 

Some day our spirits may be permitted to walk in galleries 



270 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



of fancies more wondrous and beautiful than any achieved 
works which at present we see, and our minds to behold and 
delight in masterpieces which poets' and artists' minds have 
fathered and conceived only. 

With a feeling much akin to that with which I looked upon 
the friend's — the admirable artist's — unfinished work, I can 
fancy many readers turning to the last pages which were traced 
by Charlotte Bronte's hand. Of the multitude that have read 
her books, who has not known and deplored the tragedy of her 
family, her own most sad and untimely fate ? Which of her 
readers has not become her friend ? Who that has known her 
books has not admired the artist's noble English, the burning 
love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at 
wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the 
passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman ? What a story is 
that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder on the 
gloomy northern moors ! At nine o'clock at night, Mrs. Gaskell 
tells, after evening prayers, when their guardian and relative 
had gone to bed, the three poetesses — the three maidens, Char- 
lotte, and Emily, and Anne — Charlotte being the " motherly 
friend and guardian to the other two " — " began, like restless 
wild animals, to pace up and down their parlor, * making out ' 
their wonderful stories, talking over plans and projects, and 
thoughts of what was to be their future life." 

One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte Nicholls sat 
with her husband by the fire, listening to the howling of the 
wind about the house, she suddenly said to her husband, " If 
you had not been with me, I must have been writing now." 
She ran up stairs, and brought down, and read aloud, the be- 
ginning of a new tale. When she had finished, her husband 
remarked, " The critics will accuse you of repetition." She 
replied, " Oh ! I shall alter that. I always begin two or three 
times before I can please myself." But it was not to be. The 
trembling little hand was to write no more. The heart newly 
awakened to love and happiness, and throbbing with maternal 
hope, was soon to cease to beat ; that intrepid outspeaker and 
champion of truth, that eager, impetuous redresser of wrong, 
was to be called out of the world's fight and struggle, to lay 
down the shining arms, and to be removed to a sphere where 
even a noble indignation cor ulterius neqtiit lacerare, and where 
truth complete, and right triumphant, no longer need to wage 
war. 

I can only say of this lady, vidi tafittim. I saw her first just 
as I rose out of an illness from which I had never thought to 



THE LAST SKETCH. 



271 



recover. I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, 
the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me 
to characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to 
task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about 
Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She 
jumped too rapidly to conclusions. (I have smiled at one or 
two passages in the " Biography," in which my own disposi- 
tion or behavior forms the subject of talk.) She formed con- 
clusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of 
character upon them. New to the London world, she entered 
it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own ; and 
judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance 
or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was 
angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell 
below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the 
London folk prematurely : but perhaps the city is rather angry 
at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc march- 
ing in upr-n us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. 
She ga\e me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and 
high-minded persor;. A great and holy reverence of right an^ 
truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief inter- 
view, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life so noble, 
so lonely — of that passion for truth — of those nights and nights 
of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, 
prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most 
touching ana admirable history of the heart that tlirobbed in 
this one little frame — of this one amongst the myriads of souls 
that have lived and died on this great earth — this great earth ? 
— this little speck in the infinite universe of God, — with what 
wonder do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, 
when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear ! As I 
read this little fragmentary sketch, I think of the rest. Is it ? 
And where is it .-• Will not the leaf be turned some day, and 
the story be told ? Shall the deviser of the tale somewhere 
perfect the history of little Emma's griefs and troubles ? Shall 
TiTANiA come forth complete with her sportive court, with the 
flowers at her feet, the forest around her, and all the stars of 
summer glittering overhead ? 

How well I remember the delight, and wonder, and pleasure 
with which I read "Jane Eyre," sent to me by an author whose 
name and sex were then alike unknown to me ;. the strange 
fascinations of the book ; and how with my own work pressing 
upon me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them 
down until they were read through ! Hundreds of those who, 



272 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



like myself, recognized and admired that master-work of a great 
genius, will look with a mournful interest and regard and curi- 
osity upon the last fragmentary sketch from the noble hand 
which wrote " Jane Eyre." 



THE END OF "ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



THE FOUR GEORGES: 

SKETCHES OF MANNERS, MORALS, COURT, AND 
TOWN LIFE. 



U73) 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 



Very few years since, I knew familiarly a lady, who had been 
asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been patted 
on the head by George I. This lady had knocked at Dr. 
Johnson's door ; had been intimate with Fox, the beautiful 
Georgina of Devonshire, and that brilliant Whig society of the 
reign of George III. ; had known the Duchess of Queensberry, 
the patroness of Gay and Prior, the admired young beauty of 
the court of Queen Anne. I often thought as I took my kind 
old friend's hand, how with it I held on to the old society of 
wits and men of the world. I could travel back for seven-score 
years of time — have glimpses of Brummell, Selwyn, Chester- 
field, and the men of pleasure ; of Walpole and Conway ; ot 
Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith ; of North, Chatham, Newcas- 
tle ; of the fair maids of honor of George II. 's court; of the 
German retainers of George I.'s ; where Addison was secretary 
of state ; where Dick Steele held a place ; whither the great 
Marlborough came with his fiery spouse ; when Pope, and Swift, 
and Polingbroke yet lived and wrote. Of a society so vast, busy, 
brilliant, it is impossible in four brief chapters to give a com- 
plete notion ; but we may peep here and there into that by-gone 
world of the Georges, see what they and their courts were like ; 
glance at the people round about them ; look at past manners, 
fashions, pleasures, and contrast them with our own. I have 
to say this much by way of preface, because the subject of 
these lectures has been misunderstood, and I have been taken 
to task for not having given grave historical treatises, which it 
never was my intention to attempt. Not about battles, about 
politics, about statesmen and measures of state, did I ever 
think to lecture you : but to sketch the manners and life of the 
old world ; to amuse for a few hours with talk about the old 
society ; and, with the result of many a day's and night's pleas- 



276 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

ant reading, to try and while away a few winter evenings for 
my hearers. 

Among the German princes who sat under Luther at Wit- 
tenburg, was Duke Ernest of Celle, whose younger son, William 
of Liineburg, was the progenitor of the illustrious Hanoverian 
house at present reigning in Great Britain. Duke William held 
his court at Celle, a little town of ten thousand people that lies 
on the railway line between Hamburg and Hanover, in the 
midst of great j^lains of sand, upon the river Aller. When duke 
William had it, it was a very humble wood-built place, with a 
great brick church, which he sedulously frequented, and in 
which he and others of his house lie buried. He was a very 
religious lord, and was called William the Pious by his small 
circle of subjects, over whom he ruled till fate deprived him 
both of sight and reason. Sometimes, in his latter days, the 
good Duke had glimpses of mental light, when he would bid 
his musicians play the psalm-tunes which he loved. One thinks 
of a descendant of his, two Imndred years afterwards, blind, 
old, and lost of wits, singing Handel in Windsor Tower. 

William the Pious had fifteen children, eight daughters and 
seven sons, who, as the property left among them was small, 
drew lots to determine which one of them should marry, and 
continue the stout race of the Guelphs. The lot fell on Duke 
George, the sixtli brother. The others remained single, or con- 
tracted left-handed marriages after the princely fashion of those 
days. It is a queer picture — that of the old Prince dying in 
his little wood-built capital, and his seven sons tossing up which 
should inherit and transmit the crown of Brentford. Duke 
George, the lucky prizeman, made the tour of Europe, during 
which he visited the c uirt of Queen Elizabeth ; and in the year 
161 7, came back and settled at Zell, with a wife out of Darm- 
stadt. His remaining brothers all kept their house at Zell, for 
economy's sake. And presently, in due course, they all died — 
all the honest Dukes ; Ernest, and Christian, and Augustus, 
and Magnus, and George, and John — and they are buried in 
the brick church of Brentford yonder, by the sandy banks of 
the Aller. 

Dr. Vehse gives a pleasant glimpse of the way of life of our 
Dukes in Zell. " When the trumpeter on the tower has blown," 
Duke Christian orders — viz. : at nine o'clock in the morning, and 
four in the evening — every one must be present at meals, and 
those who are not must go without. None of the servants, un- 
less it be a knave who has been ordered to ride out, shall eat 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 



277 



or drink in the kitchen or cellar ; or, without special leave^ 
fodder his horses at the Prince's cost. When the meal is 
served in the court-room, a page shall go round and bid every 
one be quiet and orderly, forbidding all cursing, swearing, and 
rudeness ; all throwing about of bread, bones, or roast, or pocket- 
ing of the same. Every morning, at seven, the squires shall have 
their morning soup, along with which, and dinner, they shall be 
served with their under-drink — -every morning, except Friday 
morning, when there was sermon, and no drink. Every even- 
ing they shall have their beer, and at night their sleep-drink. 
The butler is especially warned not to allow noble or simple to 
go into the cellar : wine shall only be served at the Prince's or 
councillors' table ; and every Monday, the honest old Duke 
Christian ordains the accounts shall be ready, and the expenses 
in the kitchen, the wine and beer cellar, the bakehouse and 
stable, made out. 

Duke George, the marrying Duke, did not stop at home to 
partake of the beer and wine, and the sermons. He went 
about fighting wherever there was profit to be had. He served 
as general in the army of the circle of Lower Saxony, the Prot- 
estant army ; then he went over to the Emperor, and fought in 
his armies in Germany and Italy ; and when Gustavus Adolphus 
appeared in Germany, George took service as a Swedish gen- 
eral, and seized the Abbey of Hildesheim, as his share of the 
plunder. Here, in the year 1641, Duke George died, leaving 
four sons behind him, from the youngest of whom descend our 
royal Georges. 

Under these children of Duke George, the old God-fearing, 
simple ways of Zell appear to have gone out of mode. The 
second brother was constantly visiting Venice, and leading a 
jolly, wicked life there. It was the most jovial of all places at 
the end of the seventeeth century ; and military men, after a 
campaign, rushed thither, as the warriors of the Allies rushed to 
Paris in 18 14, to gamble, and rejoice, and partake of all sorts 
of godless delights. This Prince, then, loving Venice and its 
pleasures, brought Italian singers and dancers back with him to 
quiet old Zell ; and worse still, demeaned himself by marrying 
a French lady of birth quite inferior to his own — Eleanor 
d'Olbreuse, from whom our Queen is descended. Eleanor had 
a pretty daughter, who inherited a great fortune, which inflamed 
her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, with a desire to marry 
her, and so, with her beauty and her riches, she came to a sad 
end. 

It is too long to tell how the four sons of Duke George 



278 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

divided his territories among them, and how, finally, they came 
into possession of the son of the youngest of the four. In this 
generation the Protestant faith was very nearly extinguished in 
the family : and then where should we in England have gone 
for a king? The third brother also took delight in Italy, where 
the priests converted him and his Protestant chaplain too. 
Mass was said in Hanover once more ; and Italian soprani 
piped their Latin rhymes in place of the hymns which William 
the Pious and Dr. Luther sang. Louis XIV. gave this and 
other converts a splendid pension. Crowds of Frenchmen 
and brilliant French fashions came into his court It is incal- 
culable how much that royal bigwig cost Germany. Every 
prince imitated the French King, and had his Versailles, his 
Wilhelmshohe or Ludwigslust ; his court and its splendors ; 
his gardens laid out with statues ; his fountains, and water- 
works, and Tritons ; his actors, and dancers, and singers, and 
fiddlers ; his harem, with its inhabitants ; his diamonds and 
duchies for these latter ; his enormous festivities, his gaming- 
tables, tournaments, masquerades, and banquets lasting a week 
long, for which the people paid with their money, when the poor 
wretches had it ; with their bodies and very blood when they 
had none; being sold in thousands by their lords and masters, 
who gayly dealt in soldiers, staked a regiment upon the red at 
the gambling-table; swapped a battalion against a dancing- 
girl's diamond necklace ; and, as it were, pocketed their 
people. 

As one views Europe, through contemporary books of travel 
in the early part of the last centurj^ the landscape is awful — ■ 
wretched wastes, beggarly and plundered ; half-burned cottages 
and trembling peasants gathering piteous harvests ; gangs of 
such tramping along with bayonets behind them, and corporals 
with canes and cats-of-nine-tails to flog them to barracks. By 
these passes my lord's gilt carriage floundering through the 
ruts, as he swears at the postilions, and toils on to the Residenz. 
Hard by, but away from the noise and brawling of the citizens 
and buyers, is Wilhelmslust or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or 
Versailles — it scarcely matters which, — near to the city, shut 
out by woods from the beggared country, the enormous, hideous, 
gilded, monstrous marble palace, where the Prince is, and the 
Court, and the trim gardens, and huge fountains, and the forest 
where the ragged peasants are beating the game in (it is death 
to them to touch a feather) ; and the jolly hunt sweeps by with 
its uniform of crimson and gold ; and the Prince gallops ahead 
puffing his royal horn ; and his lords and mistresses ride after 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 279 

him ; and the stag is pulled down ; and the grand huntsman 
gives the knife in the midst of a chorus of bugles ; and 'tis 
time the Court go home to dinner ; and our noble traveller, it 
may be the Baron of Pollnitz, or the Count de Konigsmarck, 
or the excellent Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the procession 
gleaming through the trim avenues of the wood, and hastens 
to the inn, and sends his noble name to the marshal of the 
Court. Then our nobleman arrays himself in green and gold, 
or pink and silver, in the richest Paris mode, and is introduced 
by the chamberlain, and makes his bow to the jolly Prince, 
and the gracious Princess ; and is presented to the chief lords 
and ladies, and then comes supper and a bank at Faro, where 
he loses or wins a thousand pieces by daylight. If it is a 
German court, you may add not a little drunkenness to this 
picture of high life ; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you 
can see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest 
vistas, misery is lying outside ; hunger is stalking about the 
bare villages, listlessly following precarious husbandry ; plough- 
ing stony fields with starved cattle ; or fearfully taking in scanty 
harvests. Augustus is fat and jolly on his throne ; he can 
knock down an ox, and eat one almost ; his mistress, Aurora 
von Konigsmarck, is the loveliest, the wittiest creature ; his 
diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and 
his feasts as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis the 
Great, he is more than mortal. Lift up your glances respect- 
fully, and mark him eyeing Madame de Fontanges or Madame 
de Montespan from under his sublime periwig, as he passes 
through the great gallery where Villars and Vendome, and 
Berwick, and Bossuet, and Massillon are waiting. Can Court 
be more splendid ; nobles and knights more gallant and 
superb ; ladies more lovely ? A grander monarch, or a more 
miserable starved wretch than the peasant his subject, you 
cannot look on. Let us bear both these types in mind, if we 
wish to estimate the old society properly. Remember the glory 
and the chivalry ? Yes ! Remember the grace and beauty, 
the splendor and lofty politeness ; the gallant courtesy of 
Fontenoy, where the French line bids the gentlemen of the 
English guard to fire first ; the noble constancy of the old 
King and Villars his general, who fits out the last army with 
the last crown-piece from the treasury, and goes to meet the 
enemy and die or conquer for France at Denain. But round 
all that royal splendor lies a nation enslaved and ruined : there 
are people robbed of their rights — communities laid waste — 
faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and wellnigh destroyed 



28o THE FOUR GEORGES. 

— nay, in the ver)' centre of royalty itself, what horrible stains 
and meanness, crime and shame ! It is but to a silly harlot 
that some of the noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest 
women in the world, are bowing down ; it is the price of a 
miserable province that the King ties in diamonds round his 
mistress's white neck. In the first half of the last century, I 
say, this is going on all Europe over. Saxony is a waste as 
well as Picardy or Artois ; and Versailles is only larger and 
not worse than Herrenhausen. 

It was the first Elector of Hanover who made the fortunate 
match which bestowed the race of Hanoverian Sovereigns upon 
us Brito'ns. Nine years after Charles Stuart lost his head, his 
niece Sophia, one of many children of another luckless dethroned 
sovereign, the Elector Palatine, married Ernest Augustus of 
Brunswick, and brought the reversion to the crown of the three 
kingdoms in her scanty trousseau. 

One of the handsomest, the most cheerful, sensible, shrewd, 
accomplished of women, was Sophia, daughter of poor Fred- 
erick, the winter king of Bohemia. The other daughters of 
lovely, unhappy Elizabeth Stuart went off into the Catholic 
Church ; this one, luckily for her family, remained, I cannot 
say faithful to the Reformed Religion, but at least she adopted 
no other. An agent of the French King's, Gourville, a convert 
himself, strove to bring her and her husband to a sense of the 
truth ; and tells us that he one day asked Madame the Duchess 
of Hanover, of what religion her daughter was, then a pretty 
girl of thirteen years old. The Duchess replied that the prin- 
cess was of no religion as yet. They were waiting to know of 
what religion her husband would be, Protestant or Catholic, 
before instructing her ! And the Duke of Hanover having 
heard all Gourville's proposal, said that a change would be 
advantageous to his house, but that he himself was too old to 
change. 

This shrewd woman had such keen eyes that she knew how 
to shut them upon occasion, and was blind to many faults 
which it appeared that her husband the Bishop of Osnaburg 
and Duke of Hanover committed. He loved to take his 
pleasure like other sovereigns — was a merry prince, fond of 
dinner and the bottle ; liked to go to Italy, as his brothers had 
done before him ; and we read how he jovially sold 6,700 of 
his Hanoverians to the seigniory of Venice. They went bravely 
off to the Morea, under command of Ernest's son, Prince Max, 
and only 1,400 of them ever came home again. The German 
princes sold a good deal of this kind of stock. You may 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 281 

remember how George III.'s Government purchased Hessians, 
and the use we made of them during the War of Independence. 

The ducats Duke Ernest got for his soldiers he spent in a 
series of the most briUiant entertainments. Nevertheless, the 
jovial prince was economical, and kept a steady eye upon his 
own interests. He achieved the electoral dignity for himself ; 
he married his eldest son George to his beautiful cousin of 
Zell ; and sending his sons out in command of armies to fight 
— now on this side, now on that — he lived on, taking his pleas- 
ure, and scheming his schemes, a merry, wise prince enough, 
not, I fear, a moral prince, of which kind we shall have but a 
very few specimens in the course of these lectures. 

Ernest Augustus had seven children in all, some of whom 
were scapegraces, and rebelled against the parental system of 
primogeniture and non-division of property which the Elector 
ordained. " Gustchen," the Electress writes about her second 
son • — " Poor Gus is thrust out, and his father will give him no 
more keep. I laugh in the day and cry all night about it ; for 
I am a fool with my children." Three of the six died fighting 
against Turks, Tartars, Frenchmen. One of them conspired, 
revolted, fled to Rome, leaving an agent behind him, whose 
head was taken off. The daughter, of whose early education 
we have made mention, was married to the Elector of Branden- 
burg, and so her religion settled finally on the Protestant side. 

A niece of the Electress Sophia — who had been made to 
change her religion, and marry the Duke of Orleans, brother 
of the French King ; a woman whose honest heart was always 
with her friends and dear old Deutschland, though her fat 
little body was confined at Paris, or Marly, or Versailles — has 
left us, in her enormous correspondence (part of which has 
been printed in German and French), recollections of the Elec- 
tress, and of George her son. Elizabeth Charlotte was at Os- 
naburg when George was born (1660). She narrowly escaped 
a whipping for being in the way on that auspicious day. She 
seems not to have liked little George, nor George grown up ; 
and represents him as odiously hard, cold, and silent. Silent 
he may have been : not a jolly prince like his father before 
him, but a prudent, quiet, selfish potentate, going his owm 
way, managing his own aft'airs, and understanding his own 
interests remarkably well. 

In his father's lifetime, and at the head of the Hanover 
forces of 8,000 or 10,000 men, George served the Emperor, on 
the Danube against Turks, at the siege of Vienna, in Italy, 
and on the Rhine. When he succeeded to the Electorate, he 



282 THE FOUR GEORGES 

handled its affairs with great prudence and dexterity. He was 
very much liked by his people of Hanover. He did not show 
his feelings much, but he cried heartily on leaving them ; as 
they used for joy when he came back. He showed an uncom- 
mon Drudence and coolness of behavior when he came into his 
kingdom ; exhibiting no elation ; reasonably doubtful whether 
he should not be turned out someday ; looking upon himself only 
as a lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure of St. 
James's and Hampton Court ; plundering, it is true, somewhat, 
and dividing amongst his German followers ; but what could be 
expected of a sovereign who at home could sell his subjects at 
so many ducats per head, and make no scruple in so disposing 
of them ? I fancy a considerable shrewdness, prudence, and 
even moderation in his ways. The German Protestant was a 
cheaper, and better, and kinder king than the Catholic Stuart 
in whose chair he sat, and so far loyal to England, that he let 
England govern herself. 

Having these lectures in view, I made it my business to visit 
that ugly cradle in which our Georges were nursed. The old 
town of Hanover must look still pretty much as in the time 
when George Louis left it. The gardens and pavilions of Her- 
renhausen are scarce changed since the day when the stout old 
Electress Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding but 
by a few weeks to the tomb James H.'s daughter, whose death 
made way for the Brunswick Stuarts in England. 

The two first royal Georges, and their father, Ernest Augus- 
tus, had quite royal notions regarding marriage ; and Louis XIV. 
and Charles H. scarce distinguished themselves more at Ver- 
sailles or St. James's, than these German sultans in their little 
city on the banks of the Leine. You may see at Herrenhausen 
the very rustic theatre in which the Platens danced and per- 
formed masques, and sang before the Elector and his sons. 
There are the very fauns and dryads of stone still glimmering 
through the branches, still grinning and piping their ditties of 
no tone, as in the days when painted nymphs hung garlands 
round them ; appeared under their leafy arcades with gilt 
crooks, guiding rams with gilt horns ; descended from " ma- 
chines " in the guise of Diana or Minerva ; and delivered im- 
mense allegorical compliments to the princes returned home 
from the campaign. 

That was a curious state of morals and politics in Europe ; 
a queer consequence of the triumph of the monarchical prin- 
ciple. Feudalism was beaten down. The nobility, in its quar- 
rels with the crown, had pretty well succumbed, and the mon- 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 



^83 



arch was all in all. He became almost divine : the proudest 
and most ancient gentry of the land did menial service for him. 
Who should carry Louis XIV. 's candle when he went to bed ? 
what prince of the blood should hold the king's shirt when his 
Most Christian Majesty changed that garment .'' — the French 
memoirs of the seventeenth century are full of such details and 
squabbles. The tradition is not yet extinct in Europe. Any of 
you who were present, as myriads were, at that splendid 
pageant, the opening of our Crystal Palace in London, must 
have seen two noble lords, great officers of the household, with 
ancient pedigrees, with embroidered coats, and stars on their 
breasts and wands in their hands, walking backwards for near 
the space of a mile, while the royal procession made its prog- 
ress. Shall we wonder — shall we be angry — shall we laugh at 
these old-world ceremonies ? View them as you will, according 
to your mood ; and with scorn or with respect, or with anger 
and sorrow, as your temper leads you. Up goes Gesler's hat 
upon the pole. Salute that symbol of sovereignty with heart- 
felt awe ; or with a sulky shrug of acquiescence, or with a 
grinning obeisance ; or with a stout rebellious No — clap your 
own beaver down on your pate, and refuse to doff it to that 
spangled velvet and flaunting feather. I make no comment 
upon the spectators' behavior ; all I say is, that Gesler's cap 
is still up in the market-place of Europe, and not a few folks 
are still kneeling to it. 

Put clumsy, high Dutch statues in place of the marbles of 
Versailles : fancy Herrenhausen waterworks in place of those 
of Marly : spread the tables with Schweinskopf, Specksuppe, 
Leberkuchen, and the like delicacies, in place of the French 
cuisine ; and fancy Frau von Kielmansegge dancing with Count 
Kammerjunker Quirini, or singing French songs with the most 
awful German accent : imagine a coarse Versailles, and we have a 
Hanover before us. " I am now got into the region of beauty," 
writes Mary Wortley, from Hanover in 1716 ; "all the women 
have literally rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and necks, jet eye- 
brows, to which may generally be added coal-black hair. These 
perfections never leave them to the day of their death, and 
have a very fine effect by candle-light ; but I could wish they 
were handsome with a little variety. They resemble one another 
as Mrs. Salmon's Court of Great Britain, and are in as much 
danger of melting away by too nearly approaching the fire." 
The sly Mary Wortley saw this painted seraglio of. the first 
George at Hanover, the year after his accession to the British 
throne. There were great doings and feasts there. Here Lady 



284 1^^- FOUR GEORGES. 

Mary saw George II. too. " I can tell you. without flattery or 
partiality," she says, " that our young prince has all the accom- 
plishments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air of 
sprightliness and understanding, and a something so very en- 
gaging in his behavior that needs not the advantage of his rank 
to appear charming." I find elsewhere similar panegyrics upon 
Frederick Prince of Wales, George II. 's son ; and upon George 
III., of course, and upon George IV. in an eminent degree. It 
was the rule to be dazzled by princes, and people's eyes winked 
quite honestly at that royal radiance. 

The Electoral Court of Hanover was numerous — pretty 
well paid, as times went ; above all, paid with a regularity which 
few other European courts could boast of. Perhaps you will be 
amused to know how the Electoral Court was composed. There 
were the princes of the house in the first class ; in the second, 
the single field-marshal of the army (the contingent was 18,000 
Pollnitz says, and the Elector had other 14,000 troops in his 
pay). Then follow, in due order, the authorities civil and 
military, the working privy councillors, the generals of cavalry 
and infantry, in the third class ; the high chamberlain, high 
marshals of the court, high masters of the horse, the major- 
generals of cavalry and infantry, in the fourth class ; down to 
the majors, the hofjunkers or pages, the secretaries or assessors, 
of the tenth class, of whom all were noble. 

We find the master of the horse had 1,090 thalers of pay; 
the high chamberlain, 2,000 — a thaler being about three shillings 
of our money. There were two chamberlains, and one for the 
Princess ; five gentlemen of the chamber, and five gentlemen 
ushers ; eleven pages and personages to educate these young 
noblemen — such as a governor, a preceptor, a fecht-meister, or 
fencing-master, and a dancing ditto, this latter with a handsome 
salary of 400 thalers. There were three body and court 
physicians, with 800 and 500 thalers ; a court barber 600 
thalers ; a court organist ; two musikanten ; four French fid- 
dlers ; twelve trumpeters, and a bugler ; so that there was 
plenty of music, profane and pious, in Hanover. There were 
ten chamber waiters, and twenty-four lackeys in livery ; a 
maitre-d'hotel, and attendants of the kitchen ; a French cook ; 
a. body cook ; ten cooks ; six cooks' assistants ; two Braten 
masters, or masters of the roast — (one fancies enormous spits 
turning slowly, and the honest masters of the roast beladling 
the dripping) ; a pastry-baker ; a pie-baker ; and finally three 
scullions, at the modest remuneration of eleven thalers. In 
the sugar-chamber there were four pastry-cooks (for the ladies, 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 285 

no doubt) ; seven officers in the wine and beer cellars ; four 
bread-bakers ; and five men in the plate-room. There were 
600 horses in the Serene stables — no less than twenty teams 
of princely carriage horses, eight to a team ; sixteen coachmen; 
fourteen postilions ; nineteen ostlers ; thirteen helps, besides 
smiths, carriage-masters, horse-doctors, and other attendants 
of the stable. The female attendants were not so numerous : 
I grieve to find but a dozen or fourteen of them about the 
Electoral pre#iises, and only two washerwomen for all the 
Court. These functionaries had not so much to do as in the 
present age. I own to finding a pleasure in these small- beer 
chronicles. I like to people the old world, with its every-day 
figures and inhabitants — not so much with heroes fighting im- 
mense battles and inspiring repulsed battalions to engage ; of 
statesmen locked up in darkling cabinets and meditating pon- 
derous laws or dire conspiracies — as with people occupied with 
their every-day work or pleasure ; my lord and lady hunting in 
the forest, or dancing in the Court, or bowing to their Serene 
Highnesses as they pass in to dinner ; John Cook and his pro- 
cession bringing the meal from the kitchen ; the jolly butlers 
bearing in the flagons from the cellar ; the stout coachman 
driving the ponderous gilt wagon, with eight cream-colored 
horses in housings of scarlet velvet and morocco leather ; a 
postilion on tlie leaders, and a pair or a half-dozen of running 
footmen scudding along by the side of the vehicle, with conical 
caps, long silver-headed maces, which they poised as they ran, 
and splendid jackets laced all over with silver and gold. I 
fancy the citizens' wives and their daughters looking out from 
the balconies ; and the burghers over their beer and INIumm, 
rising up, cap in hand, as the cavalcade passes through the 
town with torch-bearers, trumpeters blowing their lusty cheeks 
out, and squadrons of jack-booted life-guardsmen, girt with 
shining cuirasses, and bestriding thundering chargers, escort- 
ing his Highness's coach from Hanover to Herrenhausen ; or 
halting, mayhap, at Madame Platen's country house of Mon- 
plaisir, which lici half-way between the summer-palace and the 
Hesidenz. 

In the good old times of which I am treating, whilst com- 
mon men were driven off by herds, and sold to fight the Empe- 
ror's enemies on the Danube, or to bayonet King Louis's troops 
of common men on the Rhine, noblemen passed from court to 
court, seeking service with one prince or the other, and naturally 
taking command of the ignoble vulgar soldiery which battled 
and died almost without hope of promotion. Noble adventurers 



286 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

travelled from court to court in search of employment ; not 
merely noble males, but noble females too ; and if these latter 
were beauties, and obtained the favorable notice of princes, 
they stopped in the courts, became the favorite of their Serene 
or Royal Highnesses ; and received great sums of money and 
splendid diamonds ; and were promoted to be duchesses, mar- 
chionesses, and the like ; and did not fall much in public es- 
teem for the manner in wliich they won their advancement. In 
this way Mdlle. de Querouailles, a beautiful French lady, came 
to London on a special mission of Louis XIV., and was adopted 
bv our grateful country and sovereign, and figured as Duchess 
of Portsmouth. In this way the beautiful Aurora of Konigs- 
marck travelling about found favor in the eyes of Augustus 
of Saxony, and became the mother of Marshal Saxe, who 
gave us a beating at Fontenoy ; and in this manner the lovely 
sisters Elizabeth and Melusina of IMeissenbach (who had act- 
ually been driven out of Paris, whither they had travelled on a 
like errand, by the wise jealousy of the female favorite there in 
possession) journeyed to Hanover, and became favorites of the 
serene house there reigning. 

That beautiful Aurora von Konigsmarck and her brother are 
wonderful as types of by-gone manners, and strange illustrations 
of the morals of old days. The Konigsmarcks were descended 
from an ancient noble family of Brandenburg, a branch of 
which passed into Sweden, where it enriched itself and pro- 
duced several mighty men of valor. 

The founder of the race was Hans Christof, a famous 
warrior and plunderer of t/e Thirty Year^' war. One of Hans' 
sons. Otto, appeared as ambassador at the court of Louis XIV., 
and had to make a Swedish speech at his reception before the 
Most Christian King. Otto was a famous dandy and warrior, 
but he forgot his speech, and what do you think he did.? Far 
from being disconcerted, he recited a portion of the Swedish 
Catechism to his Most Christian Majesty and his court, not 
one of whom understood his lingo with the exception of his 
own suite, who had to keep their gravity as best they might. 

Otto's nephew, Aurora's elder brother, Carl johann of 
Konigsmarck, a favorite of Charles II., a beauty, a dandy, a 
warrior, a rascal of more than ordinary mark, escaped but 
deserved being hanged in England, for the murder of Tom 
Thynne of Longleat." He had a little brother in London with 
him at this time : — as great a beauty, as great a dandy, as great 
a villain as his elder. This lad, Philip of Konigsmarck, also 
was implicated in the affair ; and perhaps it is a pity that he 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 



287 



ever brought his pretty neck out of it. He went over to Han- 
over, and was soon appointed colonel of a regiment of H. E. 
Highness's dragoons. In early life he had been page in the 
court of Celle ; and it was said that he and the pretty Princess 
Sophia Dorothea, who by this time was married to George the 
Electoral Prince, had been in love with each other as children. 
Their loves were now to be renewed, not innocently, and to 
come to a fearful end. 

A biography of the wife of George I., by Mr. Doran, has 
lately appeared, and I confess I am astounded at the verdict 
which that writer has delivered, and at his acquittal of this 
most unfortunate lady. That she had a cold selfish libertine 
of a husband no one can doubt ; but that the bad husband had 
a bad wife is equally clear. She was married to her cousin for 
money or convenience, as all princesses were married. She 
was most beautiful, lively, witty, accomplished : his brutality 
outraged her : his silence and coldness chilled her : his cruelty 
insulted her. No wonder she did not love him. Plow could 
love be a part of the compact in such a marriage as that } With 
this unlucky heart to dispose of, the creature bestowed it on 
Philip of Konigsmarck, than whom a greater scamp does not 
walk the history of the seventeenth century. A hundred and 
eighty years after the fellow was thrust into his unknown grave, 
a Swedish professor lights upon a box of letters in the Univer- 
sity Library at Upsala, written by Philip and Dorothea to each 
other, and telling their miserable stor}\ 

The bewitching Konigsmarck had conquered two female 
hearts in Hanover. Besides the electoral Prince's lovely 
young wife Sophia Dorothea, Philip had inspired a passion in a 
hideous old court lady, the Countess of Platen. The Princess 
seems to have pursued him with the fidelity of many years. 
Heaps of letters followed him on his campaigns, and were an- 
swered by the daring adventurer. The Princess wanted to fly 
with him ; to quit her odious husband at any rate. She be- 
sought her parents to receive her back ; had a notion of taking 
refuge in France and going over to the Catholic religion ; had 
absolutely packed her jewels for flight, and very likely arranged 
its details with her lover, in that last long night's interview, 
after which Philip of Konigsmarck was seen no more. 

Konigsmarck, inflamed with drink — there is scarcely any 
vice of which, according to his own showing, this gentleman 
was not a practitioner — had boasted at a supper at Dresden of 
his intimacy with the two Hanoverian ladies, not only with the 
Princess, but with another lady powerful in Hanover. The 



288 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

Countess Platen, the old favorite of the Elector, hated the 
young Electoral Princess. The young lady had a lively wit, 
and constantly made fun of the old one. The Princess's jokes 
were conveyed to the old Platen just as our idle v/ords are 
carried about at this present day : and so they both hated each 
other. 

The characters in the tragedy, of which the curtain was 
now about to fall, are about as dark a set as eye ever rested 
on. There is the jolly Prince, shrewd, selfish, scheming, lov- 
ing his cups and his ease (I think his good-humor makes the 
tragedy but darker) ; his Princess, who speaks little but ob- 
serves all ; his old painted Jezebel of a mistress ; his son, the 
Electoral Prince, shrewd too, quiet, selfish, not ill-humored, 
and generally silent, except when goaded into fury by the in- 
tole-rable tongue of his lovely wife ; there is poor Sophia Doro- 
thea, with her coquetry and her wrongs, and her passionate 
attachment to her scamp of a lover, and her wild imprudences, 
and her mad artifices, and her insane fidelity, and her furious 
jealousy regarding her husband (though she loathed and 
cheated him), and her prodigious falsehoods ; and the confi- 
dante, of course, into whose hands the letters are slipped ; and 
there is Lothario, finally, than whom, as I have said, one can't 
imagine a more handsome, wicked, worthless reprobate. 

How that perverse fidelity of passion pursues the villain ! 
How madly true the woman is, and how astoundingly she lies ! 
She has bewitched two or three persons who have taken her up, 
and they won't believe in her wrong. Like Mary of Scotland, 
she finds adherents ready to conspire for her even in history, 
and people who have to deal with her are charmed, and fasci- 
nated, and bedevilled. How devotedly Miss Strickland has 
stood by Mary's innocence ! Are there not scores of ladies in 
this audience who persist in it too ? Innocent ! I remember 
as a boy how a great party persisted in declaring Caroline of 
Brunswick was a martyred angel. So was Helen of Greece in- 
nocent. She never ran away with Paris, the dangerous young 
Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, ill-used her ; and there nevef 
was any siege of Troy at all. So was Bluebeard's wife inno- 
cent. She never peeped into the closet where the other wives 
were with their heads cut off. She never dropped the key, or 
stained it with blood ; and her brothers were quite right in fin- 
ishing Bluebeard, the cowardly brute ! Yes, Caroline of Bruns- 
wick was innocent ; and Madame Laffarge never poisoned her 
husband ; and Mary of Scotland never blew up hers ; and poor 
Sophia Dorothea was never unfaithful ; and Eve never took the 
apple — it was a cowardly fabrication of the serpent's. 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 289 

George Louis has been held up to execration as a murder- 
ous Bluebeard, whereas the Electoral Prince had no share in 
the transaction in which Philip of Konigsmarck was scuffled 
out of this mortal scene. The Prince was absent when the 
catastrophe came. The Princess had had a hundred warnings \ 
mild hints from her husband's parents ; grim remonstrances 
from himself — but took no more heed of this advice than such 
besotted poor wretches do. On the night of Sunday, the ist of 
July, 1694, Konigsmarck paid a long visit to the Princess, and 
left her to get ready for flight. Her husband was away at Ber- 
lin ; her carriages and horses were prepared and ready for the 
elopement. Meanwhile, the spies of Countess Platen had 
brought the news to their mistress. She went to Ernest 
Augustus, and procured from the Elector an order for the 
arrest of the Swede. On the way by which he was to come, 
four guards were commissioned to take him. He strove to cut 
his way through the four men, and wounded more than one of 
them. They fell upon him ; cut him down ; and, as he was 
lying wounded on the ground, the Countess, his enemy, whom 
he had betrayed and insulted, came out and beheld him pros- 
trate. He cursed her with his dying lips, and the furious 
woman stamped upon his mouth with her heel. He was de- 
spatched presently ; his body burnt the next day ; and all traces 
of the man disappeared. The guards who killed him were en- 
joined silence under severe penalties. The Princess was re- 
ported to be ill in her apartments, from which she was taken in 
October of the same year, being then eight-and-twenty years 
old, and consigned to the castle of Ahlden, where she remained 
a prisoner for no less than thirty-two years. A separation had 
been pronounced previously between her and her husband. 
She was called henceforth the " Princess of Ahlden," and her 
silent husband no more uttered her name. 

Four years after the Konigsmarck catastrophe, Ernest 
Augustus, the first Elector of Hanover, died, and George Louis, 
his son, reigned in his stead. Sixteen years he reigned in Han- 
over, after which he became, as we know, King of Great Britain, 
France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. The wicked old 
Countess Platen died in the year 1706. She had lost her sight, 
but nevertheless the legend says that she constantly saw Kon- 
igsmarck's ghost by her wicked old bed. And so there was an 
end of her. 

In the year 1700, the little Duke of Gloucester, the last of 
poor Queen Anne's children, died, and the folks of Hanover 
straightway became of prodigious importance in England. The 

19 



3^0 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



Electress Sophia was declared the next in succession to the 
English throne. George Louis was created Duke of Cam- 
bridge \ grand deputations were sent over from our country to 
Deutschland ; but Queen Anne, whose weak heart hankered 
after her relatives at St. Germains, never could be got to allow 
her cousin, the Elector Duke of Cambridge, to come and pay 
his respects to her Majesty, and take his seat in her House of 
Peers. Had the Queen lasted a month longer ; had the Eng- 
lish Tories been as bold and resolute as they were clever and 
crafty; had the Prince whom the nation loved and pitied been 
equal to his fortune, George Louis had never talked German in 
St. James's Chapel Royal. 

When the crown did come to George Louis he was in no 
hurry about putting it on. He waited at home for awhile ; 
took an affecting farewell of his dear Hanover and Herren- 
hausen ; and set out in the most leisurely manner to ascend 
" the throne of his ancestors," as he called it in his first speech 
to Parliament. He brought with him a compact body of Ger- 
mans, whose society he loved, and whom he kept round the 
royal person. He had his faithful German chamberlains ; his 
German secretaries ; his negroes, captives of his bow and 
spear in Turkish wars ; his two ugly, elderly German favorites, 
Mesdames of Kielmansegge and Schulenberg, whom he created 
respectively Countess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendal. 
The Duchess was tall, and lean of stature, and hence was ir- 
reverently nicknamed the Maypole. The Countess was a large- 
sized noblewoman, and this elevated personage was denomi- 
nated the Elephant. Both of these ladies loved Hanover and 
its delights ; clung round the linden-trees of the great Herren- 
hausen avenue, and at first would not quit the place. Schulen- 
berg, in fact, could not come on account of her debts ; but 
finding the Maypole would not come, the Elephant packed up 
her trunk and slipped out of Hanover, unwieldy as she was. 
On this the Maypole straightway put herself in motion, and fol- 
lowed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking 
of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had 
selected ; the courtiers who came in his train ; the English 
nobles who came to welcome him, and on many of whom the 
shrewd old cynic turned his back — I protest it is a wonderful 
satirical picture. I am a citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, 
say, and crying hurrah for King George ; and yet I can scarcely 
keep my countenance, and help laughing at the enormous ab- 
surdity of this advent ! 

Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the Archbishop o£ 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 



291 



Canterbury prostrating himself to the head of his church, with 
Kielmansegge and Schulenberg with their ruddled cheeks grin- 
ning behind the defender of the faith. Here is my Lord Duke 
of Marlborough kneeling too, the greatest warrior of all times; 
he who betrayed King William — betrayed King James II. — • 
betrayed Queen Anne — betrayed England to the French, the 
Elector to the Pretender, the Pretender to the Elector; and 
here are my Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke, the latter of whom 
has just tripped up the heels of the former ; and if a month's 
more time had been allowed him, would have had King James 
at Westminster. The great Whig gentlemen made their bows 
and congees with proper decorum and ceremony ; but yonder 
keen old schemer knows the value of their loyalty. " Loyalty," 
he must think, " as applied to me — it is absurd ! There are 
fifty nearer heirs to the throne than I am. I am but an acci- 
dent, and you fine Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake, 
not for mine. You Tories hate me ; you archbishop, smirking 
on your knees, and prating about Heaven, you know I don't 
care a fig for your Thirty-nine Articles, and can't understand a 
word of your stupid sermons. You, my Lords Bolingbroke and 
Oxford — you know you were conspiring against me a month 
ago ; and you, my Lord Duke of Marlborough — you would sell 
me or any man else, if you found your advantage in it. Come, 
my good Melusina, come, my honest Sophia, let us go into my 
private room, and have some oysters and some Rhine wine, 
and some pipes afterwards : let us make the best of our situa- 
tion ; let us take what we can get, and leave these bawling, 
brawling, lying English to shout, and fight, and cheat, in their 
own way ! " 

If Swift had not been committed to the statesmen of the 
losing side, what a fine satirical picture we might have had of 
that general sauve qui peu( dimongst the Tory party ! How mum 
the Tories became ; how the House of Lords and House of 
Commons chopped round ; and how decorously the majorities 
welcomed King George ! 

Bolingbroke, making his last speech in the House of Lords, 
pointed out the shame of the peerage, where several lords 
concurred to condemn in one general vote all that they had 
approved in former parliaments by many particular resolutions. 
And so their conduct was shameful. St. John had the best of 
the argument, but the worst of the vote. Bad times were come 
for him. He talked philosophy, and professed innocence. He 
courted retirement, and was ready to meet persecution ; but, 
hearing that honest Mat Prior, who had been recalled from 



292 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



Paris, was about to peach regarding the past transactions, the 
philosopher bolted, and took that magnificent head of his out 
of the ugly reach of the axe. Oxford, the lazy and good- 
humored, had more courage, and awaited the storm at home. 
He and Mat Prior both had lodgings in the Tower, and both 
brought their heads safe out of that dangerous menagerie. 
When Atterbury was carried off to the same den a few years 
afterwards, and it was asked, what next should be done with 
him ? " Done with him ? Fling him to the lions," Cadogan 
said, Marlborough's lieutenant. But the British lion of those 
days did not care much for drinking the blood of peaceful peers 
and poets, or crunching the bones of bishops. Only four men 
were executed in London for the rebellion of 17 15 ; and twenty- 
two in Lancashire. Above a thousand taken in arms, sub- 
mitted to the King's mercy, and petitioned to be transported 
to his Majesty's colonies in America. I have heard that their 
descendants took the loyalist side in the disputes which arose 
sixty years after. It is pleasant to find that a friend of ours, 
worthy Dick Steele, was for letting off the rebels with their 
lives. 

As one thinks of what might have been, how amusing the 
speculation is ! We know how the doomed Scottish gentlemen 
came out at Lord Mar's sumnions, mounted the white cockade, 
that has been a flower of sad poetry ever since, and rallied 
round the ill-omened Stuart standard at Braemar. Mar, with 
8,000 men, and but 1,500 opposed to him, might have driven 
the enemy over the Tweed, and taken possession of the whole 
of Scotland ; but that the Pretender's Duke did not venture to 
move when the day was his own. Edinburgh Castle might 
have been in King James's hands ; but that the men who were 
to escalade it stayed to drink his health at the tavern, and 
arrived two hours too late at the rendezvous under the castle 
wall. There was sympathy enough in the town — the projected 
attack seems to have been known there — Lord Mahon quotes 
Sinclair's account of a gentleman not concerned, who told Sin- 
clair, that he was in a house that evening where eighteen of 
them were drinking, as the facetious landlady said, " powder- 
ing their hair," for the attack on the castle. Suppose they had 
not stopped to powder their hair 1 Edinburgh Castle, and 
town, and all Scotland were King James's. The north of Eng- 
land rises, and marches over Barnet Heath upon London. 
Wyndham is up in Somersetshire ; Packington in Worcester- 
shire ; and Vivian in Cornwall. The Elector of Hanover, and 
his hideous mistresses, pack up the plate, and perhaps the 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 



293 



crown jewels in London, and are off vid Harwich and Helvoet- 
sluys, for dear old Deutschland. The King — God save him 1 
lands at Dover, with tumultuous applause ; shouting multitudes, 
roaring cannon, the Duke of Marlborough weeping tears of joy, 
and all the bishops kneeling in the mud. In a few years, mass 
is said in St. Paul's ; matins and vespers are sung in York 
Minster ; and Dr. Swift is turned out of his stall and deanery 
at St. Patrick's, to give place to Father Dominic, from Sala- 
manca. All these changes were possible then, and once thirty 
years afterwards — all this we might have had, but for the////- 
veris exiguijactit, that little toss of powder for the hair which 
the Scottish conspirators stopped to take at the tavern. 

You understand the distinction I would draw between 
history — of which I do not aspire to be an expounder — and 
manners and life such as these sketches would describe. The 
rebellion breaks out in the north ; its story is before you in a 
hundred volumes, in none more fairly than in the excellent 
narrative of Lord Mahon. The clans are up in Scotland ; 
Derwentwater, Nithsdale and Forster are in arms in North- 
umberland — these are matters of history, for which you are 
referred to the due chroniclers. The Guards are set to watch 
the streets, and prevent the people wearing white roses. I 
read presently of a couple of soldiers almost flogged to death 
for wearing oakboughs in their hats on the 29th of May — 
another badge of the beloved Stuarts. It is with these we have 
to do, rather than the marches and battles of the armies to 
which the poor fellows belonged — with statesmen, and how they 
looked, and how they lived, rather than with measures of State, 
which belong to history alone. For e:;; niple, at the close of the 
old Queen's reign, it is known the Duke of Marlborough left the 
kingdom — after what menaces, after what prayers, lies, bribes 
offered, taken, refused, accepted ; after what dark doubling and 
tacking, let history, if she can or dare, say. The Queen dead ; 
who so eager to return as my lord duke ? Who shouts God 
save the King ! so lustily as the great conqueror of Blenheim 
and Malplaquet ? (By the way, he will send over some more 
money for the Pretender yet, on the sly.) Who lays his hand 
on his blue ribbon, and lifts his eyes more gracefully to heaven 
than this hero ? He makes a quasi-triumphal entrance into 
London, by Temple Bar, in his enormous gilt coach — and the 
enormous gilt coach breaks down somewhere by Chancery 
Lane, and his highness is obliged to get another. There it is 
we have him. We are with the mob in the crowd, not with the 
great folks in the procession. We are not the Historic Muse, 



294 



THE POUR GEORGES. 



but her ladyship's attendant, tale-bearer — valet de chamhre — fof 
whom no man is a hero ; and, as yonder one steps from his car- 
riage to the next handy conveyance, we take the number of the 
hack ; we look all over at his stars, ribbons, embroidery ; we 
think within ourselves, O you unfathomable schemer ! O you 
warrior invincible ! O you beautiful smiling Judas ! Whaf 
master would you not kiss or betray ? What traitor's head, 
blackening on the spikes on yonder gate, ever hatched a tithe 
of the treason which has worked under your periwig ? 

We have brought our Georges to London City, and if we 
would behold its aspect, may see it in Hogarth's lively perspec- 
tive of Cheapside, or read it in a hundred contemporary books 
which paint the manners of that age. Our dear old Spectator 
looks smiling upon the streets, with their innumerable signs, 
and describes them with his charming humor. " Our streets 
are filled with Blue Boars, Black Swans, and Red Lions, not 
to mention Flying Pigs and Hogs in Armor, with other crea- 
tures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa." 
A few of these quaint old figures .still remain in London town. 
You may still see there, and over its old hostel in Ludgate 
Hill, the " Belle Sauvage " to whom the .S/^rA?/i9/- so pleasantly 
alludes in that paper ; and who was, probably, no other than 
the sweet American Pocahontas, who rescued from death the 
daring Captain Smith. There is the " Lion's Head," down 
whose jaws the Spectator's own letters wer5 passed ; and over 
a great banker's in Fleet Street, the effigy of the wallet, which 
the founder of the firm bore when he came into London a 
country boy. People this street, so ornamented, with crowds 
of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, 
with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey marching before 
him ; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her foot- 
boy carrying her ladyship's great prayer-book ; with itinerant 
tradesmen singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years 
ago, as boy in London City, a score of cheery, familiar cries 
that are silent now). Fancy the beaux thronging to the choco- 
late-houses, tapping their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their 
periwigs appearing over the red curtains. Fancy Saccharissa, 
beckoning and smiling from the upper windows, and a crowd 
of soldiers brawling and bustling at the door — gentlemen of 
the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue facings, and laced 
with gold at the seams ; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, 
in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on 
the front in gold and silver ; men of the Halberdiers, in their 
long red coats, as bluff Flarry left them, with their ruff and 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 



295 



velvet flat caps. Perhaps the King's Majesty himself is going 
to St. James's as we pass. If he is going to Parliament, he is 
in his coach-and-eight, surrounded by his guards and the high 
officers of his crown. Otherwise his Majesty only uses a chair, 
with six footmen walking before, and six yeomen of the guard 
at the sides of the sedan. The officers in waiting follow the 
King in coaches. It must be rather slow work. 

Our Spectator and Tatler are full of delightful glimpses of 
the town life of those days. In the company of that charming 
guide, we may go to the opera, the comedy, the puppet-show, 
the auction, even the cockpit : we can take boat at Temple 
Stairs, and accompany Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spec- 
tator to Spring Garden — it will be called Vauxhall a few years 
hence, when Hogarth will paint for it. Would you not like to step 
back into the past and be introduced to Mr. Addison ? Not 
the Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq., George I.'s Secre- 
tary of State, but to the delightful painter of contemporary 
manners ; the man who, when in good-humor himself, was the 
pleasantest companion in all England. I should like to go into 
Lockit's with him, and drink a bowl along with Sir R. Steele 
(who has just been knighted by King George, and who does 
not happen to have any money to pay his share of the reckon- 
ing). I should not care to follow Mr. Addison to his secretary's 
office in Whitehall. There we get into politics. Our business 
is pleasure, and the town, and the coffee-house, and the theatre, 
and the Mall. Delightful Spectator.! kind friend of leisure 
hours ! happy companion ! true Christian gentleman ! How 
much greater, better, you are than the King Mr. Secretary 
kneels to ! 

You can have foreign testimony about old-world London, if 
you like ; and my before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron 
de Pollnitz, will conduct us to it. " A man of sense," says he, 
" or a fine gentleman, is never at a loss for company in Lon- 
don, and this is the way the latter passes his time. He rises 
late, puts on a frock, and, leaving his sword at home, takes his 
cane, and goes where he pleases. The park is commonly the 
place where he walks, because 'tis the Exchange for men of 
quality. 'Tis the same thing as the Tuileries at Paris, only the 
park has a certain beauty of simplicity which cannot be described. 
The grand walk is called the Mall ; is full of people at every 
hour of the day, but especially at morning and evening, when 
their Majesties often walk with the royal family, who are at- 
tended only by a half-dozen yeomen of the guard, and permit 
all persons to walk at the same time with them. The ladies 



296 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

and gentlemen always appear in rich dresses, for the English, 
who, twenty years ago, did not wear gold lace but in their army, 
are now embroidered and bedaubed as much as the French. 
I speak of persons of quality ; for the citizen still contents him- 
self with a suit of fine cloth, and a good hat and wig, and fine 
linen. Everybody is well clothed here, and even the beggars 
don't make so ragged an appearance as they do elsewhere." 
After our friend, the man of quality, has had his morning or 
undress walk in the Mall, he goes home to dress, and then 
saunters to some coffee-house or chocolate-house frequented 
by the persons he would see. " For 'tis a rule with the Eng- 
lish to go once a day at least to houses of this sort, where 
they talk of business and news, read the papers, and often look 
at one another without opening their lips. And 'tis very well 
they are so mute ; for were they all as talkative as people of 
other nations, the coffee-houses would be intolerable, and there 
would be no hearing what one man said where they are so 
many. The chocolate-house in St. James's Street, where I go 
every morning to pass away the time, is always so full that a 
man can scarcely turn about in it." 

Delightful as London City M'as, King George I. liked to be 
out of it as much as ever he could ; and when there, passed all 
his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher, 
100 years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down 
from St. Paul's, and sighed out, " Was fur Plunder ! " The 
German women plundered ; the German secretaries plundered ; 
the German cooks and intendants plundered ; even Mustapha 
and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. 
Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim. He 
was not a lofty monarch, certainly : he was not a patron of 
the fine arts ; but he was not a hypocrite, he was not revenge- 
ful, he was not extravagant. Though a despot in Hanover, he 
was a moderate ruler in England. His aim was to leave it to 
itself as much as possible, and to live out of it as much as he 
could. His heart was in Hanover. When taken ill on his 
last journey, as he was passing through Holland, he thrust his 
livid head out of the coach-window, and gasped out, " Osna- 
burg, Osnaburg ! " He was more than fifty years of age when 
he came amongst us : we took him because we wanted him, 
because he served our turn ; we laughed at his uncouth Ger- 
man ways, and sneered at him. He took our loyalty for what 
it was worth ; laid hands on what money he could ; kept 
us assuredly from Popery and wooden shoes. I, for one, would 
have been on his side in those days. Cynical, and selfish, as 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 297 

he was, he was better than a king out of St. Germainswith the 
French King's order in his pocket, and a swarm of Jesuits in 
his train. 

The Fates are supposed to interest themselves about royal 
personages ; and so this one had omens and prophecies spe- 
cially regarding him. He was said to be much disturbed at a 
prophecy that he should die very soon after his wife ; and sure 
enough, pallid Death having seized upon the luckless Princess 
in her castle of Ahlden, presently pounced upon H. M. King 
George I., in his travelling-chariot, on the Hanover road. 
What postilion can outride that pale horseman ? It is said, 
George promised one of his left-handed widows to come to her 
after death, if leave were granted to him to revisit the glimpses 
of the moon ; and soon after his demise, a great raven actually 
flying or hopping in at the Duchess of Kendal's window at 
Twickenham, she chose to imagine the king's spirit inhabited 
these plumes, and took special care of her sable visitor. Affect- 
ing metempsychosis — funereal royal bird ! How pathetic is 
the idea of the Duchess weeping over it ! When this chaste 
addition to our English aristocracy died, all her jewels, her 
plate, her plunder went over to her relations in Hanover. I 
wonder whether her heirs took the bird, and whether it is still 
flapping its wings over Herrenhausen ? 

The days are over in England of that strange religion of 
king-worship, when priests flattered princes in the Temple of 
God ; when servility was held to be ennobling duty ; when 
beauty and youth tried eagerly for royal favor ; and woman's 
shame was held to be no dishonor. Mended morals and 
mended manners in courts and people, are among the priceless 
consequences of the freedom which George I. came to rescue 
and secure. He kept his compact with his English subjects ; 
and if he escaped no more than other men and monarchs from 
the vices of his age, at least we may thank him for preserving 
and transmitting the liberties of ours. In our free air, royal 
and humble homes have alike been purified ; and Truth, the 
birthright of high and low among us, which quite fearlessly 
judges our greatest personages, can only speak of them now in 
words of respect and regard. There are stains in the portrait 
of the first George, and traits in it which none of us need ad- 
mire ; but, among the nobler features, are justice, courage, 
moderation — and these we may recognize ere we turn the 
picture to the wall. 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 



On the afternoon of the 14th of June, 1727, two horsemen 
might have been perceived galloping along the road from Chel- 
sea to Richmond. The foremost, cased in the jack-boots of the 
period, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and very corpulent 
cavalier ; but, by the manner in which he urged his horse, you 
might see that he was a bold as well as a skilful rider. Indeed, 
no man loved sport better ; and in the hunting-fields of Nor^ 
folk, no squire rode more boldly after the fox, or cheered Ring- 
wood and Sweettips more lustily, than he who now thundered 
over the Richmond road. 

He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and asked to see 
the owner of the mansion. The mistress of the house and her 
ladies, to whom our friend was admitted, said he could not be 
introduced to the master, however pressing the business might 
be. The master was asleep after his dinner ; he always slept 
after his dinner : and woe be to the person who interrupted 
him ! Nevertheless, our stout friend of the jack-boots put the 
affrighted ladies aside, opened the forbidden door of the bed- 
room, wherein upon the bed lay a little gentleman ; and here 
the eager messenger knelt down in his jack-boots. 

He on the bed started up, and with many oaths and a 
strong German accent asked who was there, and who dared to 
disturb him ? 

" I am Sir Robert Walpole," said the messenger. The 
awakened sleeper hated Sir Robert Walpole. " I have the 
honor to announce to your Majesty that your royal father, 
King George I., died at Osnaburg, on Saturday last, the loth 
inst." 

" Dat is one hi^ lie ! " roared out his sacred Majesty King 
George H. : but Sir Robert Walpole stated the fact, and from 
(298) 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 



299 



that day until three-and-thirty years after, George, the second 
of the name, ruled over England. 

How the King made away with his father's will under the 
astonished nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury ; how he 
was a choleric little sovereign ; how he shook his fist in the face 
of his father's courtiers ; how he kicked his coat and wig 
about in his rages, and called everybody thief, liar, rascal, with 
whom he differed : you will read in all the history books ; and 
how he speedily and shrewdly reconciled himself with the bold 
minister, whom he had hated during his father's life, and by 
whom he was served during fifteen years of his own with ad- 
mirable prudence, fidelity, and success. But for Sir Robert 
Walpole, we should have had the Pretender back again. But 
for his obstinate love of peace, we should have had wars, which 
the nation was not strong enough nor united enough to endure. 
But for his resolute counsels and good-humored resistance we 
might have had German despots attempting a Hanoverian regi- 
ment over us : we should have had revolt, commotion, want, 
and tyrannous misrule, in place of a quarter of a century of 
peace, freedom, and material prosperity, such as the country 
never enjoyed, until that corrupter of parliaments, that dissolute 
tipsy cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that 
great citizen, patriot, and statesman governed it. In religion 
he was little better than a heathen ; cracked ribald jokes at 
bigwigs and bishops, and laughed at High Church and Low. 
In private life the old pagan revelled in the lowest pleasures : 
he passed his Sundays tippling at Richmond ; and his holy- 
days bawling after dogs, or boozing at Houghton with boors 
over beef and punch. He cared for letters no more than his 
master did : he judged human nature so meanly that one is 
ashamed to have to own that he was right, and that men could 
be corrupted by means so base. But, with his hireling House 
of Commons, he defended liberty for us ; with his incredulity 
he kept Church-craft down. There were parsons at Oxford as 
double-dealing and dangerous as any priests out of Rome, and 
he routed them both. He gave Englishmen no conquests, but 
he gave them peace, and ease, and freedom ; the three per cents 
nearly at par ; and wheat at f ve and six and twenty shillings a 
quarter. 

It was lucky for us that our first Georges were not mora 
high-minded men ; especially fortunate that they loved Han- 
over so much as to leave England to have her own way. Our 
chief troubles began when we got a king who gloried in the 
name of Briton, and, being born in the country, proposed to 



300 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



rule it. He was no more fit to govern England than his grand- 
father and great-grandfather, who did not try. It was righting 
itself during their occupation. The dangerous, noble old 
spirit of cavalier loyalty was dying out ; the stately old English 
High Church was emptying itself : the questions dropping 
which, on one side and the other ; — the side of loyalty, prerog- 
ative, church, and king ; — the side of right, truth, civil and re- 
ligious freedom, — had set generations of brave men in arms. 
By the time when George HI. came to the throne, the combat 
between loyalty and liberty was come to an end ; and Charles 
Edward, old, tipsy, and childless, was dying in Italy. 

Those who are curious about European Court history of the 
last age know the memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth, and 
what a Court was that of Berlin, where George II.'s cousins 
ruled sovereign. Frederick the Great's father knocked down 
his sons, daughters, officers of state ; he kidnapped big men all 
Europe over to make grenadiers of : his feasts, his parades, his 
wine-parties, his tobacco-parties, are all described. Jonathan 
Wild the Great in language, pleasures, and behavior, is scarcely 
more delicate than this German sovereign. Louis XV,, his life, 
and reign, and doings, are told in a thousand French memoirs. 
Our George II., at least, was not a worse king than his neigh- 
bors. He claimed and took the royal exemption from doing 
right which sovereigns assumed. AduU little man of low tastes 
he appears to us in England ; yet Hervey tells us that this 
choleric prince was a great sentimentalist, and that his letters 
— of which he wrote prodigious quantities — were quite danger- 
ous in their powers of fascination. He kept his sentimentali- 
ties for his Germans and his queen. With us English, he 
never chose to be familiar. He has been accused of avarice, 
yet he did not give much money, and did not leave much be- 
hind him. He did not love the fine arts, but he did not pre- 
tend to love them. He was no more a hypocrite about religion 
than his father. He judged men by a low standard ; yet, with 
such men as were near him, was he wrong in judging as he did ? 
He readily detected lying and flattery, and liars and flat- 
terers were perforce his companions. Had he been more 
of a dupe he might have been more amiable. A dismal 
experience made him cynical. No boon was it to him to 
be clear-sighted, and see only selfishness and flattery round 
about him. What could Walpole tell him about his Lords and 
Commons, but that they were all venal ? Did not his clergy, 
his courtiers, bring him the same story ? Dealing with men 
and women in his rude, skeptical way, he came to doubt about 




AVE, C-^SAR. 



GEORGE THE SECOND. ^oi 

honor, male and female, about patriotism, about religion. " He 
is wild, but he fights like a man," George I., the taciturn, said 
of his son and successor. Courage George II. certainly had. 
The Electoral Prince, at the head of his father's contingent, 
had approved himself a good and brave soldier under Eugene 
and Marlborough. At Oudenarde he specially distinguished 
himself. At Malplaquet the other claimant to the English 
throne won but little honor. There was always a question 
about James's courage. Neither then in Flanders, nor after- 
wards in his own ancient kingdom of Scotland, did the luckless 
Pretender show much resolution. But dapper little George had 
a famous tough spirit of his own, and fought likft a Trojan. 
He called out his brother of Prussia, with sword and pistol \ 
and I wish, for the interest of romancers in general, that that 
famous duel could have taken place. The two sovereigns 
hated each other with all their might ; their seconds were ap- 
pointed ; the place of meeting was settled ; and the duel was 
only prevented by strong representations made to the two, of 
the European laughter which would have been caused by such 
a transaction. 

Whenever we hear of dapper George at war, it is certain 
that he demeaned himself- like a little man of valor. At Det- 
tingen his horse ran away with him, and with difficulty was 
stopped from carrying him into the enemy's lines. The King, 
dismounting from the fiery quadruped, said bravely, " Now I 
know I shall not run away ; " and placed himself at the head 
of the foot, drew his sword, brandishing it at the whole of the 
French army, and calling out to his own men to come on, in 
bad English, but with the most famous pluck and spirit. In 
'45, when the Pretender was at Derby, and many people began 
to look pale, the King never lost his courage — not he. " Pooh ! 
don't talk to me that stuff ! " he said, like a gallant little prince 
as he was, and never for one moment allowed his equanimity, 
or his business, or his pleasures, or his travels, to be disturbed. 
On public festivals he always appeared in the hat and coat he 
wore on the famous day of Oudenarde ; and the people laughed, 
but kindly, at the odd old garment, for bravery never goes out 
of fashion. 

In private life the Prince showed himself a worthy descend- 
ant of his father. In this respect, so much has heen said 
about the first George's manners, that we need not enter into a 
description of the son's German harem. In 1705 he married a 
princess remarkable for beauty, for cleverness, for learning, for 
good temper — one of the truest and fondest wives ever prince 



302 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



was blessed with, and who loved him and was faithful to him, 
and he, in his coarse fashion, loved her to the last. It must be 
told to the honor of Caroline of Anspach, that, at the time 
when German princes thought no more of changing their reli- 
gion than you of altering your cap, she refused to give up Prot- 
estantism for the other creed, although an archduke, after- 
wards to be an emperor, was offered to her for a bridegroom. 
Her Protestant relations in Berlin were angry at her rebellious 
spirit ; it was they who tried to convert her (it is droll to think 
that Frederick ti.e Great, who had no religion at all, was known 
for a long time in England as the Protestant hero), and these 
good Protestants set upon Caroline a certain Father Urban, a 
very skilful Jesuit, and famous winner of souls. But she 
routed the Jesuit ; and she refused Charles VI. ; and she mar- 
ried the little Electoral Prince of Hanover, whom she tended 
with love, and with every manner of sacrifice, with artful kind- 
ness, with tender flattery, with entire self-devotion, thencefor- 
ward until her life's end. 

When George I. made his first visit to Hanover, his son was 
appointed regent during the royal absence. But this honor 
was never again conferred on the Prince of Wales ; he and his 
father fell out presently. On the occasion of the christening of 
his second son, a royal row took place, and the Prince, shaking 
his fist in the Duke of Newcastle's face, called him a rogue, 
and provoked his august father. He and his wife were turned 
out of St. James's, and their princely children taken from them, 
by order of the royal head of the family. Father and mother 
wept piteously at parting from their little ones. The young 
ones sent some cherries, with their love, to papa and mamma ; 
the parents watered the fruit with tears. They had no tears 
thirty-five years afterwards, when Prince Frederick died — their 
eldest son, their heir, their enemy. 

The King called his daughter-in-law " cette diablesse madame 
la princesses The frequenters of the latter's court were for- 
bidden to appear at the King's : their Royal Highnesses going 
to Bath, we read how the courtiers followed them thither, and 
paid that homage in Somersetshire which was forbidden in 
London. That phrase of '''' cette diablesse mada7fie la prittcesse," 
explains one cause of the wrath of her royal papa. She was a 
very clever woman : she had a keen sense of humor : she had 
a dreadful tongue : she turned into ridicule the antiquated 
sultan and his hideous harem. She wrote savage letters about 
him home to members of her family. So, driven out from the 
royal presence, tlie Prince and Princess set up for themselves 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 



l^l 



in Leicester Fields, " wliere," says Walpole, " the most prom- 
ising of the young gentlemen of the next party, and the 
prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new 
court." Besides Leicester House, they had their lodge at 
Richmond, frequented by some of the pleasantest company of 
those days. There were the Herveys, and Chesterfield, and 
little Mr. Pope from Twickenham, and with him, sometimes, 
the savage Dean of St. Patrick's, and quite a bevy of young 
ladies, whose pretty faces smile on us out of history. There 
was Lepell, famous in ballad song; and the saucy, charming 
Mary Bellenden, who would have none of the Prince of Wales's 
fine compliments, who folded her arms across her breast, and 
bade H. R. H. keep off ; and knocked his purse of guineas into 
his face, and told him she was tired of seeing him count them. 
He was not an august monarch, this Augustus. Walpole tells 
how, one night at the royal card-table, the playful princess 
pulled a chair away from under Lady Deloraine, who, in re- 
venge, pulled the King's from under him, so that his Majesty 
fell on the carpet. In whatever posture one sees this royal 
George, he is ludicrous somehow ; even at Dettingen, where he 
fought so bravely, his figure is absurd — callingout in his broken 
English, and lunging with his rapier, like a fencing-master. In 
contemporary caricatures, George's son, "the Hero of Cul- 
loden," is also made an object of considerable fun. 

I refrain to quote from Walpole regarding George — for those 
charming volumes are in the hands of all who love the gossip 
of the last century. Nothing can be more cheery than Horace's 
letters. Fiddles sing all through them : wax-lights, fine dresses, 
fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle there : 
never was such a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair as 
that through which he leads us. Hervey, the next great author- 
ity, is a darker spirit. About him there is something frightful : 
a few years since his heirs opened the lid of the Ickworth box ; 
it was as if a Pompeii was opened to us — the last century dug 
up, with its temples and its games, its chariots, its public places 
— lupanaria. Wandering through that city of the dead, that 
dreadfully selfish time, through those godless intrigues and 
feasts, through those crowds, pushing and eager, and struggling 
— rouged, and lying, and fawning — I have wanted some one 
to be friends with, I have said to friends conversant with 
that history, " Show me some good person about that Court ; 
find me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute, gay 
people, some one being that I can love and regard." There is 
that strutting little sultan George II. ; there is that hunch- 



304 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



backed, beetle-browed Lord Chesterfield ; there is John Hervey, 
with his deadly smile, and ghastly, painted face — I hate them. 
There is Hoadly, cringing from one bishopric to another : 
yonder comes little Mr. Pope, from Twickenham, with his 
friend, the Irish dean, in his new cassock, bowing too, but with 
rage flashing from under his bushy eyebrows, and scorn and hate 
quivering in his smile. Can you be fond of these ? Of Pope I 
might : at least I might love his genius, his wit, his greatness, his 
sensibility — with a certain conviction that at some fancied slight, 
some sneer which he imagined, he would turn upon and stab me. 
Can you trust the Queen ? She is not of our order : their very 
position makes kings and queens lonely. One inscrutable at- 
tachment that inscrutable woman has. To that she is faithful, 
through all trial, neglect, pain, and time. Save her husband, 
she really cares for no created being. She is good enough to 
her children, and even fond enough of them; but she would 
chop them all up into little pieces to please him. In her in- 
tercourse with all around her, she was perfectly kind, gracious, 
and natural : but friends may die, daughters may depart, she 
will be as perfectly kind and gracious to the next set. If the 
King wants her, she will smile upon him, be she ever so sad; 
and walk with him, be she ever so weary ; and laugh at his 
brutal jokes, be she in ever so much pain of body or heart. 
Caroline's devotion to her husband is a prodigy to read of. 
What charm had the little man ? What was there in those 
wonderful letters of thirty pages long, which he wrote to her 
when he was absent, and to his mistresses at Hanover, when 
he was in London with his wife ? Why did Caroline, the most 
lovely and accomplished princess of Germany, take a little red- 
faced staring princeling for a husband, and refuse an emperor ? 
Why, to her last hour, did she love him so ? She killed herself 
because she loved him so. She had the gout, and would plunge 
her feet in cold water "-in order to walk with him. With the 
film of death over her eyes, writhing in intolerable pain, she 
yet had a livid smile and a gentle word for her master. You 
have read the wonderful history of that death-bed ? How she 
bade him marry again, and the reply the old King blubbered 
out, " Non, non : j'aurai des maitresses." There never was 
such a ghastly farce. I watch the astonishing scene — I stand 
by that awful bedside, wondering at the ways in which God has 
ordained the lives, loves, rewards, successes, passions, actions, 
ends of his creatures — and can't but laugh, in the presence of 
death, and with the saddest heart. In that often-quoted passage 
from Lord Hervey, in which the Queen's death-bed is described, 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 



30S 



the grotesque horror of the details surpasses all satire : the 
dreadful humor of the scene is more terrible than Swift's 
blackest pages, or Fielding's fiercest irony. The man who 
wrote the story had something diabolical about him : the terrible 
verses which Pope wrote respecting Hervey, in one of his own 
moods of almost fiendish malignity, I fear are true. I am 
frightened as I look back into the past, and fancy I behold that 
ghastly, beautiful face ; as I think of the Queen writhing on 
her death-bed, and crying out, " Pray! — pray ! " — of the royal 
old sinner by her side, who kisses her dead lips with frantic 
grief, and leaves her to sin more ; — of the bevy of courtly 
clergymen, and the archbishop, whose prayers she rejects, and 
who are obliged for propriety's sake to shuffle off the anxious 
inquiries of the public, and vow that her Majesty quitted this 
life "in a heavenly frame of mind." What a life! — to what 
ends devoted ! What a vanity of vanities ! It is a theme for 
another pulpit than the lecturer's. For a pulpit ? — I think the 
part which pulpits play in the deaths of kings is the most 
ghastly of all the ceremonial : the lying eulogies, the blinking 
of disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the simulated 
grief, the falsehood and sycophancies — all uttered in the name 
of Fleaven in our State churches : these monstrous threnodies 
have been sung from time immemorial over kings and queens, 
good, bad, wicked, licentious. The State pr rson must bring 
out his commonplaces ; his apparatus of- rhetorical black- 
hangings. Dead king or live king, the clergyman must flatter 
him — announce his piety whilst living, and when dead, perform 
the obsequies of " our most religious and gracious king." 

I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious 
King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5,000/. 
(She betted him 5000?. that he would not be made a bishop, 
and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his 
time led up by such hands for consecration ? As I peep into 
George II.'s St. James's, I see crowds of cassocks rustling up 
the back-stairs of the ladies of the Court ; stealthy clergy 
slipping purses into their laps ; that godless old King yawning 
under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before 
him is discoursing. Discoursing about what ? — about righteous- 
ness and judgment ? Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the 
King is chattering in German almost as loud as the preacher ; 
so loud that the clergyman — it may be one Dr. Young, he who 
wrote " Night Thoughts," and discoursed on the splendors of 
the stars, the glories of heaven, and utter vanities of this world 
— actually burst out crying in his pulpit because the defender 



3o6 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



of the faith and dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to 
him ! No wonder that the clergy were corrupt and indifferent 
amidst this indifference and corruption. No wonder that 
skeptics multiplied and morals degenerated, so far as they 
depended on the influence of such a king. No wonder that 
Whitfield cried out in the wilderness, that Wesley quitted the 
insulted temple to pray on the hill-side. I look with reverence 
on those men at that time. Which is the sublimer spectacle — • 
— the good John Wesley, surrounded by his congregation of 
miners at the pit's mouth, or the Queen's chaplains mumbling 
through their morning office in their ante-room, under the 
picture of the great Venus, with the door opened into the ad- 
joining chamber, where the Queen is dressing, talking scandal 
to Lord Hervey, or uttering sneers at Lady Suffolk, who is 
kneeling with the basin at her mistress's side ? I say I am 
scared as I look round at this society — at this king, at these 
courtiers, at these politicians, at these bishops — at this flaunting 
vice and levity. VVhereabouts in this Court is the honest man ? 
Where is the pure person one may like ? The air stifles one 
with its sickly perfumes. There are some old-world follies and 
some absurd ceremonials about our Court of the present day, 
which I laugh at, but as an Englishman, contrasting it with the 
past, shall I not acknowledge the change of to-day .-• As the 
mistress of St. James's passes me now, I salute the sovereign, 
wise, moderate, exemplary of life ; the good mother ; the good 
wife; the accomplished lady ; the enlightened friend of art; 
the tender sympathizer in her people's glories and sorrows. 

Of all the Court of George and Caroline, I find no one but 
Lady Suffolk with whom it seems pleasant and kindly to hold 
converse. Even the misogynist Croker, who edited her letters, 
loves her, and has that regard for her with which her sweet 
graciousness seems to have inspired almost all men and some 
women who came near her. I have noted many little traits 
which go to prove the charms of her character (it is not merely 
because she is charming, but because she is characteristic, that 
I allude to her). She writes delightfully sober letters. Address- 
ing Mr. Gay at Tunbridge (he was, you know, a poet, penniless 
and in disgrace), she says : " The place you are in, has strangely 
filled your head with physicians and cures ; but, take my word 
for it, many a fine lady has gone there to drink the waters 
without being sick ; and many a man has complained of the 
loss of his heart, who had it in his own possession. I desire 
you will keep yours ; for I shall not be very fond of a friend 
without one, and I have a great mind you should be in the 
number of mine." 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 



307 



When Lord Peterborough was seventy years old, that in- 
domitable youth addressed some flaming love, or rather gal- 
lantry, letters to Mrs. Howard — curious relics they are of the 
romantic manner of wooing sometimes in use in those days. 
It is not passion ; it is not love ; it is gallantry : a mixture of 
earnest and acting; high-flown compliments, profound bows, 
vows, sighs and ogles, in the manner of the Clelie romances, 
and Millamont and Doricourt in the comedy. There was a 
vast elaboration of ceremonies and etiquette, of raptures — a 
regulated form for kneeling and wooing which has quite passed 
out of our downright manners. Henrietta Howard accepted 
the noble old earl's philandering; answered the queer love- 
letters with due acknowledgment ; made a profound curtsey to 
Peterborough's profound bow ; and got John Gay to help her 
in the composition of her letters in reply to her old knight. 
He wrote her charming verses, in which there was truth as 
well as grace. " O wonderful creature ! " he writes : — 

" O wonderful creature, a woman of reason ! 

Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season ! 

When so easy to guess who this anc;el should be, 

Who would think Mrs. Howard ne'er dreamt it was she ?" 

The great Mr. Pope also celebrated her in lines not less pleas- 
ant, and painted a portrait of what must certainly have been a 
delightful lady : — 

" I know a thing that's most uncommon — 
Envy, be silent and attend! — 
I know a reasonable woman. 
Handsome, yet witty, and a friend : 

" Not warp'd by passion, aw'd by rumor, 

Not grave through pride, or gay through folly i 
An equal mixture of good-humor 
And exquisite soft melancholy. 

" Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir? 
Yes she has one, I must aver — 
When all the world conspires to praise her. 
The woman's deaf, and does not hear ! " 

Even the women concurred in praising and loving her. The 
Duchess of Queensbury bears testimony to her amiable qual- 
ities, and writes to her : " I tell you so and so, because you 
love children, and to have children love you." The beautiful, 
jolly Mary Bellenden, represented by contemporaries as " the 
most perfect creature ever known," writes very pleasantly to 
her " dear Howard," her " dear Swiss," from the country, 
whither Mary had retired after her marriage, and when she 
gave up being a maid of honor, " How do you do, Mrs. How- 



3o8 ^-^^ FOUR GEORGES. 

ard ? " Mary breaks out. " How do you do, Mrs. Howard ? 
that is all I have to say. This afternoon I am taken with a fit 
of writing ; but as to matter, I have nothing better to entertaii\ 
you, than news of my farm. I therefore give you the following 
list of the stock of eatables that I ani fatting for my private 
tooth. It is well known to th.e whole county of Kent, that I 
have four fat calves, two fat hogs, fit for killing, twelve promis- 
ing black pigs, two young chickens, three fine geese, with thir- 
teen eggs under each (several being duck-eggs, else the others 
do not come to maturity) ; all this, with rabbits, and pigeons, 
and carp in plenty, beef and mutton at reasonable rates. Now, 
Howard, if you have a mind to stick a knife into anything I 
have named, say so I " 

A jolly set must they have been, those maids of honor. 
Pope introduces us to a whole bevy of them, in a pleasant 
letter. " I went," he says, "by water to Hampton Court, and 
met the Prince, with all his ladies, on horseback, coming from 
hunting. Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepell took me into pro- 
tection, contrary to the laws against harboring Papists, and gave 
me a dinner, with something I liked better, an opportunity of 
conversation with Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life 
of a maid of honor was of all things the most miserable, and 
wished that all women who envied it had a specimen of it. To 
eat Westphalia ham of a morning, ride over hedges and ditches 
on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a 
fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark on 
the forehead from an uneasy hat — all this may qualify thern to 
make excellent wives for hunters. As soon as they wipe ofif 
the heat of the day, they must simper an hour and catch cold 
in the Princess's apartment ; from thence to dinner with what 
appetite they may ; and after that till midnight, work, walk, or 
think which way they please. No lone house in Wales, with a 
mountain and rookery, is more contemplative than this Court. 
Miss Lepell walked with me three or four hours by moonlight, 
and we met no creature of any quality but the King, who gave 
audience to the vice-chamberlain all alone under the garden 
wall." 

I fancy it was a merrier England, that of our ancestors, 
than the island which we inhabit. People high and low amused 
themselves very much more. I have calculated the manner in 
which statesmen and persons of condition passed their time — • 
and what with drinking, and dining, and supping, and cards, 
wonder how they got through their business at all. They played 
all sorts of games, which, with the exception of cricket and 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 309 

tennis, have quite gone out of our manners now. In the old 
prints of St. James's Park, you still see the marks along the 
ivalk, to note the balls when the Court played at Mall. Fancy 
Birdcage Walk now so laid out, and Lord John and Lord Pal- 
merston knocking balls up and down the avenue ! Most' of 
those jolly sports belong to the past, and the good old games 
of England are only to be found in old novels, in old ballads, 
or the columns of dingy old newspapers, which say how a main 
of cocks is to be fought at Winchester between the Winchester 
men and the Hampton men ; or how the Cornwall men and the 
Devon men are going to hold a great wrestling-match at Totnes, 
and so on. 

A hundred and twenty years ago there were not only coun- 
try towns in England, but people who inhabited them. We 
were very much more gregarious ; we were amused by very sim- 
ple pleasures. Every town had its fair, every village its wake. 
The old poets have sung a hundred jolly ditties about great 
cudgel-playings, famous grinning through horse-collars, great 
maypole meetings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run 
races clad in very light attire ; and the kind gentry and good 
parsons thought no shame in looking on. Dancing bears went 
about the country with pipe and tabor. Certain well-known 
tunes were sung all over the land for hundreds of years, and 
high and low rejoiced in that simple music. Gentlemen who 
wished to entertain their female friends constantly sent for a 
band. When Beau Fielding, a mighty fine gentleman, was 
courting the lady whom he married, he treated her and her 
companion at his lodgings to a supper from the tavern, and 
after supper they sent out for a fiddler — three of them. Fancy 
the three, in a great wainscoted room, in Covent Garden or 
Soho, lighted by two or three candles in silver sconces, some 
grapes and a bottle of Florence wine on the table, and the 
honest fiddler playing old tunes in quaint old minor keys, as 
the Beau takes out one lady after the other, and solemnly 
dances with her ! 

The very great folks, young noblemen, with their governors, 
and the like, went abroad and made the great tour; the home 
satirists jeered at the Frenchified and Italian ways which they 
brought back ; but the greater number of people never left the 
country. The jolly squire often had never been twenty miles 
from home. Those who did go went to the baths, to Harro- 
gate, or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. Old letters are full 
of these places of pleasure. Gay writes to us about the fid- 
dlers at Tunbridge ; of the ladies having merry little private 



310 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



balls amongst themselves ; and the gentlemen entertaining them 
by turns with tea and music. One of the young beauties whom 
he met did not care for tea : "We have a young lady here," he 
says, " that is very particular in her desires. I have known 
some young ladies, who, if ever they prayed, would ask for 
some equipage or title, a husband or matadores : but this lady, 
who is but seventeen, and has 30,000/. to her fortune, places all 
her wishes on a pot of good ale. When her friends, for the 
sake of her shape and complexion, would dissuade her from it, 
she answers, with the truest sincerity, that by the loss of shape 
and complexion she could only lose a husband, whereas ale is 
her passion." 

Every country town had its assembly-room — mouldy old 
tenements, which we may still see in deserted inn-yards, in de- 
cayed provincial cities, out of which the great wen of London 
has sucked all the life. York, at assize times, and throughout 
the winter, harbored a large society of northern gentry. Shrews- 
bury was celebrated for its festivities. At Newmarket, I read 
of " a vast deal of good company, besides rogues and black- 
legs ; " at Norwich, of two assemblies, with a prodigious crowd 
in the hall, the rooms, and the galleiy. In Cheshire (it is a 
maid of honor of Queen Caroline who writes, and who is long- 
ing to be back at Hampton Court, and the fun there) I peep 
into a country house, and see a very merry party : " We meet 
in the work-room before nine, eat, and break a joke or two till 
twelve, then we repair to our ovi'n chambers and make ourselves 
ready, for it cannot be called dressing. At noon the great bell 
fetches us into a parlor, adorned with all sorts of fine arms, 
poisoned darts, several pair of old boots and shoes worn by 
men of might, with the stirrups of King Charles I., taken from 
him at Edgehill," — and there they have their dinner, after which 
comes dancing and supper. 

As for Bath, all history went and bathed and drank there, 
George II. and his Queen, Prince Frederick and his court, 
scarce a character one can mention of the early last century, 
but was seen in that famous Pump Room where Beau Nash 
presided, and his picture hung between the busts of Newton 
and Pope : 

" This picture, placed these busts between, 
Gives satire ail its strength : 
Wisdom and Wit are little seen, 
But Folly at full length." 

I should like to have seen the Folly. It was a splendid, 
embroidered, berufifled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled, impertinent, 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 



3" 



Folly, and knew how to make itself respected. I should like 
to have seen that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots 
(he actually had the audacity to walk about Bath in boots !), 
with his blue ribbon and stars, and a cabbage under each arm, 
and a chicken in his hand, which he had been cheapening for 
his dinner. Chesterfield came there many a time and gam- 
bled for hundreds, and grinned through his gout. Mary 
Wortley was there, young and beautiful ; and Mary Wortley, 
old, hideous, and snuffy. Miss Chudleigh came there, slipping 
awa}r from one husband, and on the look-out for another. 
Walpole passed many a day there ; sickly, supercilious, 
absurdly dandified, and affected ; with a brilliant wit, a delight- 
ful sensibility ; and for his friends, a most tender, generous, 
and faithful heart. And if you and I had been alive then, and 
strolling down Milsom Street — hush ! we should have taken 
our hats off, as an awful, long, lean, gaunt figure, swathed in 
flannels, passed by in* its chair, and a livid face looked out 
from the window — great fierce eyes staring from under a bushy, 
powdered wig, a terrible frown, a terrible Roman nose — and we 
whisper to one another, "There he is ! There's the great com- 
moner ! There is Mr. Pitt ! " As we walk away, the abbey 
bells are set a-ringing ; and we meet our testy friend Toby 
Smollett, on the arm of James Quin the actor, who tells us that 
the bells ring for Mr. Bullock, an eminent cowkeeper from 
Tottenham, who has just arrived to drink the waters ; and Toby 
shakes his cane at the door of Colonel Ringworm — the Creole" 
gentleman's lodgings next his own — where the colonel's two 
negroes are practising on the French horn. 

When we try to recall social England, we must fancy it 
playing at cards for many hours every day. The custom is well- 
nigh gone out among us now, but fifty years ago was general, 
fifty years before that almost universal, in the country. " Gam- 
ing has become so much the fashion," writes Seymour, the 
author of the " Court Gamester," " that he who in company 
should be ignorant of the games in vogue, would be reckoned 
low-bred, and hardly fit for conversation." There were cards 
everywhere. It was considered ill-bred to read in company. 
" Books were not fit articles for drawing-rooms," old ladies used 
to say. People were jealous, as it were, and angry with them. 
You will find in Hervey that George II. was always furious at 
the sight of books ; and his Queen, who loved reading, had to 
practise it in secret in her closet. But cards were the resource 
of all the world. Every night, for hours, kings and queens of 
England sat down and handled their majesties of spades and 



312 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



diamonds. In European Courts, I believe the practice still 
remains, not for gambling, but for pastime. Our ancestors 
generally adopted it. " Books ! prithee, don't talk to me about 
books," said old Sarah Marlborough. "The only books I 
know are men and cards." " Dear old Sir Roger de Coverley 
sent all his tenants a string of hogs' puddings and a pack of 
cards at Christmas," says the Spectatoi% wishing to depict a kind 
landlord. One of the good old lady writers in whose letters I 
have been dipping cries out, " Sure, cards have kept us women 
from a great deal of scandal ! " Wise old Johnson regfetted 
that he had not learnt to play. " It is very useful in life," he 
says; " it generates kindness, and consolidates society." David 
Hume never went to bed without his whist. We have Walpole, 
in one of his letters, in a transport of gratitude for the cards. 
" I shall build an altar to Pam," says he, in his pleasant dandi- 
fied way, "for the escape of my charming Duchess of Grafton." 
The Duchess had been playing cards at Rome, when she ought 
to have been at a cardinal's concert, where the floor fell in, and 
all the monsignors were precipitated into the cellar. Even die 
Nonconformist clergy looked not unkindly on the practice. " I 
do not think," says one of them, " that honest Martin Luther 
committed sin by playing at backgammon for an hour or two 
after dinner, in order by unbending his mind to promote di- 
gestion." As for the High Church parsons, they all played, 
bishops and all. On Twelfth-day the Court used to play in 
•state. This being Twelfth-day, his Majesty, the Prince of 
Wales, and the Knights Companions of the Garter, Thistle, and 
Bath, appeared in the collars of their respective orders. Their 
Majesties, the Prince of Wales, and three eldest Princesses, 
went to the Chapel Royal, preceded by the heralds. The Duke 
of Manchester carried the sword of State. The King and 
Prince made offering at the altar of gold, frankincense, and 
myrrh, according to the annual custom. At night their Majes- 
ties played at hazard with the nobility, for the benefit of the 
groom-porter ; and 'twas said the king won 600 guineas ; the 
queen, 360 ; Princess Amelia, twenty ; Princess Caroline, ten ; 
the Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Portmore, several thou- 
sands." 

Let us glance at the same chronicle, which is of the year 
1731, and see how others of our forefathers were engaged. 

" Cork, 15th January. — This day, one Tim Croneen was, for 
the murder and robbery of Mr. St. Leger and his wife, sentenced 
to be hanged two minutes, then his head to be cut off, and his 
body divided in four quarters, to be placed in four cross-ways. 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 



I'^l 



He was servant to Mr. St. Leger, and committed the murder 
with the privity of the servant-maid, who was sentenced to be 
burned ; also of the gardener, whom he knocked on the head, 
to deprive him of his share of the booty." 

"January 3. — A postboy was shot by an Irish gentleman on 
the road near Stone, in Staffordshire, who died in two days, for 
which the gentleman was imprisoned." 

"A poor man was found hanging in a gentleman's stables 
at Bungay, in Norfolk, by a person who cut him down, and 
running for assistance, left his penknife behind him. The poor 
man recovering, cut his throat with the knife ; and a river being 
nigh, jumped into it ; but company coming, he was dragged 
out alive, and was like to remain so." 

"The Honorable Thomas Finch, brother to the Earl of 
Nottingham, is appointed ambassador at the Hague, in the 
room of the Earl of Chesterfield, who is on his return home." 

" William Cowper, Esq., and the Rev. Mr. John Cowper, 
chaplain in ordinary to her Majesty, and rector of Great Berk- 
hampstead, in the county of Hertford, are appointed clerks of 
the commissioners of bankruptcy." 

" Charles Creagh, Esq., and Macnamara, Esq., between 

whom an old grudge of three years had subsisted, which had 
occasioned their being bound over about fifty times for break- 
ing the peace, meeting in company with Mr. Eyres, of Galloway, 
they discharged their pistols, and all three were killed on the 
spot — to the great joy of their peaceful neighbors, say the 
Irish papers." 

"Wheat is 26^. to 285-., and barley 20s. to 22J-. a quarter; 
three per cents., 92 ; best loaf sugar, g^^. ; Bohea, 12s. \.o 14J. ; 
Pekoe, i8j-. ; and Hyson, 2)^s. per pound," 

" At Exon was celebrated with great magnificence the birth- 
day of the son of Sir W. Courtney, Bart., at which more than 
1,000 persons were present. A bullock was roasted whole ; a 
butt of wine and several tuns of beer and cider were given to 
the populace. At the same time Sir William delivered to his 
son, then of age, Powdram Castle, and a great estate." 

" Charlesworth and Cox, two solicitors, convicted of forgery, 
stood on the pillory at the Royal Exchange. The first was 
severely handled by the populace, but the other was very much 
favored, and protected by six or seven fellows who got on the 
pillory to protect him from the insults of the mob." 

" A boy killed by falling upon iron spikes, from a lamp-post 
which he climbed to see Mother Needham stand in the pillory." 

" Mary Lynn was burnt to ashes at the stake for being 
concerned in the murder of her mistress," 



3M 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



" Alexander Russell, the foot soldier, who was capitally 
convicted for a street robbery in January sessions, was reprieved 
for transportation ; but having an estate fallen to him, obtained 
a free pardon." 

" The Lord John Russell married to the Lady Diana 
Spencer, at Marlborough House. He has a fortune of 30,000/ 
down, and is to have 100,000/. at the death of the Duchess 
Dowager of Marlborough, his grandmother." 

" March r being the anniversary of the Queen's birthday, 
when her Majesty entered the forty-ninth year of her age, there 
was a splendid appearance of nobility at St. James's. Her 
Majesty was magnificently dressed, and wore a flowered muslin 
head-edging, as did also her Royal Highness. The Lord Port- 
more was said to have had the richest dress, though an Italian 
Count had twenty-four diamonds instead of buttons." 

New clothes on the birthday were the fashion for all loyal 
people. Swift mentions the custom several times. Walpole is 
constantly speaking of it ; laughing at the practice, but havmg 
the very finest clothes from Paris, nevertheless. If the King 
and Queen were unpopular, there were very few new clothes at 
the drawing-room. In a paper in the True Patriot^ No. 3, 
written to attack the Pretender, the Scotch, French, and 
Popery, Fielding supposes the Scotch and Pretender in posses- 
sion of London, and himself about to be hanged for loyalty, — 
when, just as the rope is round his neck, he says : " My little 
girl entered my bedchamber, and put an end to my dream by 
pulling open my eyes, and telling me that the tailor had just 
brought home my clothes for his Majesty's birthday." In his 
"Temple Beau," the beau is dunned "for a birthday suit of 
velvet, 40/." Be sure that Mr. Harry Fielding was dunned 
too. 

The public days, no doubt, were splendid, but the private 
Court life must have been awfully wearisome. " I will not 
trouble you," writes Hervey to Lady Sandon, "with any ac- 
count of our occupations at Hampton Court. No mill-horse 
ever went in a more constant track, or more unchanging circle ; 
so that, by the assistance of an almanac for the day of the 
week, and a watch for the hour of the day, you may inform 
yourself fully, without any other intelligence but your memory, 
of every transaction within the verge of the Court. Walking, 
chaises, levees, and audiences fill the morning. At night the 
King plays at commerce and backgammon, and the Queen at 
quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly 
gauntlet, the Queen pulling her hood, and the Princess Royal 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 315 

rapping her knuckles. The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly 
opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princesses 
Amelia and Caroline. Lord Grantham strolls from one room 
to another (as Dryden says), like some discontented ghost that 
oft appears, and is forbid to speak ; and stirs himself about as 
people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it burn 
brisker. At last the King gets up ; the pool finishes ; and 
everybody has their dismission. Their Majesties retire to 
Lady Charlotte and my Lord Lifford ; my Lord Grantham, to 
Lady Frances and Mr. Clark : some to supper, some to bed ; 
and thus the evening and the morning make the day." 

The King's fondness for Hanover occasioned all sorts of 
rough jokes among his English subjects, to whom sauer-kraut 
and sausages have ever been ridiculous objects. When our 
present Prince Consort came amongst us, the people bawled 
out songs in the streets indicative of the absurdity of Germany 
in general. The sausage-shops produced enormous sausages 
which we might suppose were the daily food and delight of 
German princes. I remember the caricatures at the marriage 
of Prince Leopold with the Princess Charlotte. The bride- 
groom was drawn in rags. George I XL's wife was called by the 
people a beggarly German duchess ; the British idea being that 
all princes were beggarly except British princes. King George 
paid us back. He thought there were no manners out of 
Germany. Sarah Marlborough once coming to visit the Prin- 
cess, whilst her Royal Highness was whipping one of the roar- 
ing royal children, " Ah ! " says George, who was standing by, 
" you have no good manners in England, because you are not 
properly brought up when you are young." He insisted that 
no English cooks could roast, no English coachman could drive ; 
he actually questioned the superiority of our nobility, our horses, 
and our roast beef ! 

Whilst he was away from his beloved Hanover, everything 
remained there exactly as in the Prince's presence. There 
were 800 horses in the stables, there was all the apparatus o. 
chamberlains, court-marshals, and equerries ; and court assem- 
blies were held every Saturda}^ where all the nobility of 
Hanover assembled at what I can't but think a fine and touch- 
ing ceremony. A large arm-chair was placed in the assembly- 
rov m, and on it the King's portrait. The nobility advanced, 
and made a bow to the arm-chair, and to the image which 
Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up ; and spoke under their 
voices before the august picture, just as they would have done 
had the King Churfurst been present himself. 



3i6 THE FOUR GEORGES 

He was always going back to Hanover. In the year 1729, 
he went for two whole years, during which Caroline reigned for 
him in England, and he was not in the least missed by his 
British subjects. He went again in '35 and '36 ; and between 
the years 1740 and 1755 was no less than eight times on the 
Continent, which amusement he was obliged to give up at the 
outbreak of the Seven Years' war. Here every day's amuse- 
ment was the same. " Our life is as uniform as that of a 
monastery," writes a courtier whom Vehse quotes. " Every 
morning at eleven, and every evening at six, we drive in the 
heat to Herrenhausen, through an enormous linden avenue ; 
and twice a day cover our coats and coaches with dust. In the 
King's society there never is the least change. At table, and 
at cards, he sees always the same faces, and at the end of the 
games retires into his chamber. Twice a week there is a 
French theatre ; the other days there is play in the gallery. In 
this way, were the King always to stop in Hanover, one could 
make a ten years' calendar of his proceedings ; and settle be- 
forehand what his time of business, meals, and pleasure would 
be." 

The old pagan kept his promise to his dying wife. Lady 
Yarmouth was now in full favor, and treated with profound 
respect by the Hanover society, though it appears rather 
neglected in England when she came among us. In 1740, a 
couple of the King's daughters went to see him at Hanover ; 
Anna, the Princess of Orange (about whom, and whose husband 
and marriage-day, Walpole and Hervey have left us the most 
ludicrous descriptions), and Maria of Hesse Cassel, with their 
respective lords. This made the Hanover court very brilliant. 
In honor of his high guests, the King gave several y^/^'i" / among 
others, a magnificent masked ball, in the green theatre at Her- 
renhausen — the garden theatre, with linden and box for screen, 
and grass for a carpet, where the Platens had danced to George 
and his father the late sultan. The stage and a great part of 
the garden were illuminSted with colored lamps. Almost the 
whole court appeared in white dominoes, " like," says the de- 
scriber of the scene, " like spirits in the Elysian fields. At 
night, supper was served in the gallery with three great tables, 
and the King was very merry. After supper dancing was re- 
sumed, and I did not get home till five o'clock by full daylight 
to Hanover. Some days afterwards we had, in the opera-house 
at Hanover, a great assembly. The King appeared in a 
Turkish dress ; his turban was ornamented with a magnificent 
agraffe of diamonds ; the Lady Yarmouth was dressed as a 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 



Z^l 



sultana ; nobody was more beautiful than the Princess of 
Hesse." So, while poor Caroline was resting in her coffin, 
dapper little George, with his red face and his white eyebrows 
and goggle-eyes, at sixty years of age, is dancing a pretty dance 
with Madame Walmoden, and capering about dressed up like 
a Turk ! For twenty years more, that little old Bajazet went 
on in this Turkish fashion, until the fit came which choked the 
old man, when he ordered the side of his coffin to be taken out, 
as well as that of poor Caroline's who had preceded him, so 
that his sinful old bones and ashes might mingle with those of 
the faithful creature. O strutting Turkey-cock of Herren- 
hausen ! O naughty little Mahomet ! in what Turkish paradise 
are you now, and where be your painted houris ? So Countess 
Yarmouth appeared as a sultana, and his Majesty in a Turkish 
dress wore an agraffe of diamonds, and was very merry, was he ? 
Friends ! he was your father's King as well as mine — let us 
drop a respectful tear over his grave. 

He said of his wife that he never knew a woman who was 
worthy to buckle her shoe ; he would sit alone weeping before 
her portrait, and when he had dried his eves, he would go off 
to his Walmoden and talk of her. On the 25th day of October, 
1760, he being then in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and 
the thirty-fourth year of his reign, his page went to take him his 
royal chocolate, and behold ! the most religious and gracious 
King was lying dead on the floor. They went and fetched 
Walmoden ; but Walmoden could not wake him. The sacred 
Majesty was but a lifeless corpse. The King was dead ; God 
save the King ! But, of course, poets and clergymen decor- 
ously bewailed the late one. Here are some artless verses, in 
which an English divine deplored the famous departed hero, 
and over which you may cry or you may laugh, exactly as your 
humor suits : — 

" While at his feet expiring Faction lay, 
No contest left but who should best obey ; 
Saw in his offspring all himself renewed ; 
The same fair path of glory still pursued ; 
Saw to young George Augusta's cares impart 
Whate'er could raise and humanize the heart; 
Blend all his grandsire's virtues with his own, 
And from their mnigled radiance for the throne — 
No farther blessincs could on earth be given — 
The next degree of happiness was — heaven ! 

If he had been good, if he had been just, if he had been 
pure in life, and wise in council, could the poet have said much 
more ? It was a parson who came and wept over this grave, 
with Walrnoden sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the poor 



3i8 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

old man slumbering below. Here was one who had neither 

dignity, learning, morals, nor wit — who tainted a great society 
by a bad example ; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, 
low, and sensual ; and Mr. Porteus, afterwards my lord Bishop 
Porteus, says the earth was not good enough for him, and that 
his only place was heaven ! Bravo, Mr. Porteus ! The divine 
who wept these tears over George the Second's memory wore 
George the Third's lawn. I don't know whether people still 
admire his poetry or his sermons. 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



We have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. 
To read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during 
that long period, would occupy our allotted tune, and we should 
have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt 
of the American colonies ; to submit to defeat and separation ; 
to shake- under the volcano of the French Revolution; to 
grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Na- 
poleon ; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle. The 
old society, with its courtly splendors, has to pass away ; gener- 
ations of statesmen to rise and disappear ; Pitt to follow Chat- 
ham to the tomb ; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be 
superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory ; the old poets 
who unite us to Queen Anne's time to sink into their graves ; 
Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise ; Garrick to 
delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean 
to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished 
theatre. Steam has to be invented • kings to be beheaded, 
banished, deposed, restored. Napoleon to be but an episode, 
and George III, is to be alive through all these varied changes, 
to accompany his people through all these revolutions of 
thought, government, society ; to survive out of the old world 
into ours. 

When I first saw England, she was in mourning for the 
young Princess Charlotte, the hope of the empire. I came from 
India as a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way 
home, where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks 
and hills until we reached a garden where we saw a man walk- 
ing. " That is he," said the black man : " that is Bonaparte ! 
He eats three sheep every day, and all the little children he can 
lay hands on ! " There were people in the British dominions 
besides that poor Calcutta serving-man, with an equal horror of 
the Corsican ogre. 

(319) 



320 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



With the same childish attendant, I remember peeping 
through the colonnade at Carlton House, and seeing the abode 
of the great Prince Regent. I can see yet the Guards jDacing 
before the gates of the place. The place ! What place ? The 
palace exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It 
is but a name now. Where be the sentries who used to salute as 
the Royal chariots drove in and out? The chariots, with the 
kings inside^ have driven to the realms of Pluto ; the tall 
Guards have marched into darkness, and the echoes of their 
drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace once stood, a 
hundred little children are paddling up and down the steps to 
St. James's Park. A score of grave gentlemen are taking their 
tea at the " Athenaeum Club ; " as many grisly warriors are 
garrisoning the " United Service Club " opposite. Pall Mall 
is the great social Exchange of London now — the mart of news, 
of politics, of scandal, of rumor — the English forum, so to 
speak, where men discuss the last despatch from the Crimea, 
the last speech of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. 
And, now and then, to a few antiquarians whose thoughts are 
with the past rather than with the present, it is a memorial of old 
times and old people, and Pall Mall is our Palmyra. Look ! 
About this spot Tom of Ten Tlousand was killed by Konigs- 
marck's gang. In that great red house Gainsborough lived, 
and Culloden Cumberland, George III.'s uncle. Yonder is 
Sarah Marlborough's palace, just as it stood when that terma- 
gant occupied it. At 25, Walter Scott used to live ; at the 
house, now No. 79,* and occupied by the Society for the Prop- 
agation of the Gospel in Foieign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor 
Gwynn, comedian. How often has Queen Caroline's chair 
issued from under yonder arch ! All the men of the Georges 
have passed up and down the street. It has seen Walpole's 
chariot and Chatham's sedan ; and Fox, Gibbon, Sheridan, on 
their way to Brookes's ; and stately William Pitt stalking on 
the arm of Dundas ; and Hanger and Tom Sheridan reeling 
out of Raggett's ; and Byron limping into Wattier's ; and Swift 
striding out of Bury Street ; and Mr. Addison and Dick Steele, 
both perhaps a little the better for liquor ; and the Prince of 
Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement ; 
and Johnson counting the posts along the streets, after dawd- 
ling before Dodsley's window ; and Harry Walpole hobbling 
into his carriage, with a gimcrack just bought at Christie's ; 
and George Selwyn sauntering into White's. 

In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a mass of 
• 1856. 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



321 



correspondence by no means so brilliant and witty as Wal- 
pole's, or so bitter and bright as Hervey's, but as interesting, 
and even more descriptive of the time, because the letters are 
the work of many hands. You hear more voices speaking, as 
it were, and more natural than Horace's dandified treble, and 
Sporus's malignant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters 
— as one looks at Reynolds's noble pictures illustrative of those 
magnificent times and voluptuous people — one almost hears 
the voice of the dead past ; the laughter and the chorus ; the 
toast called over the brimming cups ; the shout at the race- 
course or the gaming-table ; the merry joke frankly spoken to 
the laughing fine lady. How fine those ladies were, those 
ladies who heard and spoke such coarse jokes , how grand 
those gentlemen ! 

I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentle- 
man, has almost vanished off the face of the earth, and is dis- 
appearing like the beaver or the Red Indian. We can't have 
fine gentlemen any more, because we can't have the society in 
which they lived. The people will not obey : the parasites will 
not be as obsequious as formerly : children do not go down on 
their knees to beg their parents' blessing : chaplains do not 
say grace and retire before the pudding : servants do not say 
" Your honor " and " your worship " at every moment : trades- 
men do not stand hat in hand as the gentleman passes : authors 
do not wait for hours in gentlemen's ante-rooms with a fulsome 
dedication, for which they hope to get five guineas from his 
lordship. In the days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. 
Secretary Pitt's under-secretaries did not dare to sit down 
before him ; but Mr. Pitt, in his turn, went down on his gouty 
knees to George II. ; and when George III. spoke a few kind 
words to him. Lord Chatham burst into tears of reverential joy 
and gratitude ; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and so 
great the distinctions of rank. Fancy Lord John Russell or 
Lord Palmerston on their knees whilst the Sovereign was 
reading a despatch, or beginning to cry because Albert said 
something civil 1 

At the accession of George III., the patricians were yet at 
the height of their good fortune. Society recognized their 
superiority, which they themselves pretty calmly took for grant- 
ed. They inherited not only titles and estates, and seats in 
the house of Peers, but seats in the House of Commons, 
There were a multitude of Government places, and not merely 
these, but bribes of actual 500/. notes, which members of the 
House took not much shame in receiving. Fox went into 

21 



322 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



Parliament at 20 : Pitt when just of age : his father when not 
much older. It was the good time for Patricians. Small blame 
to them if they took and enjoyed, and over-enjoyed the prizes 
of politics, the pleasures of social life. 

In these letters to Selwyn, we are made acquainted with a 
whole society of these defunct fine gentlemen ; and can watch 
with a curious interest a life which the novel-writers of that 
time, I think, have scarce touched upon. To a Smollett, to 
Fielding even, a lord was a lord : a gorgeous being with a blue 
ribbon, a coroneted chair, and an immense star on his bosom, 
to whom commoners paid reverence. Richardson, a man of 
humbler birth than either of the above two, owned that he was 
ignorant regarding the manners of the aristocracy, and besought 
Mrs. Donnellan, a lady who had lived in the great world, to 
examine a volume of Sir Charles Grandison, and point out any 
errors which she might see in this particular. Mrs. Donnellan 
found so many faults, that Richardson changed color ; shut up 
the book ; and muttered that it were best to throw it in the fire. 
Here, in Selwyn, we have the real original men and women of 
fashion of the early time of George III. We can follow them 
to the new club at Almack's : we can travel over Europe with 
them : we can accompany them not only to the public places, 
but to their country-houses and private society. Here is a 
whole company of them ; wits and prodigals ; some persevering 
in their bad ways : some repentant, but relapsing ; beautiful 
ladies, ]iarasites, humble chaplains, led captains. Those fair 
creatures whom we love in Reynolds's portraits, and who still 
look out on us from the canvases with their sweet calm faces 
and gracious smiles — those fine gentlemen who did us the 
honor to govern us ; who inherited their boroughs ; took their 
ease in their patent places ; and slipped Lord North's bribes 
so elegantly under their rufifies — we make acquaintance with a 
hundred of these fine folks, hear their talk and laughter, read 
of their loves, quarrels, intrigues, debts, duels, divorces ; can 
fancy them alive if we read the book long enough. We can 
attend at Duke Hamilton's wedding, and behold him marry his 
bride with the curtain-ring : we can peep into her poor sister's 
death-bed : we can see Charles Fox cursing over the cards, or 
March bawling out the odds at Newmarket : we can imagine 
Burgoyne tripping off from St. James's Street to conquer the 
Americans, and slinking back into the club somewhat crest- 
fallen after his beating ; we can see the young King dressing 
himself for the drawing-room and asking ten thousand ques- 
tions regarding all the gentlemen : we can have high life or low, 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



323 



the struggle at the Opera to behold the Violetta or the Zam- 
perini — the Macaronies and fine ladies in their chairs trooping 
to the masquerade or Madame Cornelys's — the crowd at Drury 
Lane to look at the body of Miss Ray, whom Parson Hackman 
has just pistolled — or we can peep into Newgate, where poor 
Mr. Rice the forger is waiting his fate and his supper. " You 
need not be particular about the sauce for his fowl," says one 
turnkey to another : " for you know he is to be hanged in the 
morning." " Yes," replies the second janitor, " but the chaplain 
sups with him, and he is a terrible fellow for melted butter." 

Selwyn has a chaplain and parasite, one Dr. Warner, than 
whom Plautus, or Ben Jonson, or Hogarth, never painted a 
better character. In letter after letter he adds fresh strokes 
to the portrait of himself, and completes a portrait not a little 
curious to look at now that the man has passed away ; all the 
foul pleasures and gambols in which he revelled, played out ; 
all the rouged faces into which he leered, worms and skulls ; 
all the fine gentlemen whose shoebuckles he kissed, laid- in 
their coffins. This worthv clergyman takes care to tell us that 
he does not believe in his religion, though, thank heaven, he is 
not so great a rogue as a lawyer. He goes on Mr. Selwyn's 
errands, any errands, and is proud, he says, to be that gentle- 
man's proveditor. He waits upon the Duke of Queensberry — 
old Q. — and exchanges pretty stories with that aristocrat. He 
comes home " after a hard day's christening," as he says, and 
writes to his patron before sitting down to whist and p^irtridges 
for supper. He revels in the thoughts of ox-cheek and Bur- 
gundy — he is a boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his mas- 
ter's shoes with explosions of laughter and cunning smack and 
gusto, and likes the taste of that blacking as much as the best 
claret in old Q.'s cellar. He has Rabelais and Horace at his 
greasy fingers' ends. He is inexpressibly mean, curiously 
jolly ; kindly and good-natured in secret — a tender-hearted 
knave, not a venomous lickspittle. Jesse says, that at his 
chapel in Long Acre, "he attained a considerable popularity 
by the pleasing, manly, and eloquent style of his delivery." 
Was infidelity endemic, and corruption in the air ? Around a 
young king, himself of the most exemplary life and undoubted 
piety, lived a court society as dissolute as our country ever 
knew. George H.'s bad morals bore their fruit in George 
ni.'s early years ; as I believe that a knowledge of that good 
man's example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity, and God- 
fearing life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the 
country and purify the whole nation. 



324 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



After Warner, the most interesting of Selvvyn's correspond- 
ents is the Earl of Carlisle, grandfather of the amiable noble- 
man at present * Viceroy in Ireland. The grandfather, too, 
was Irish Viceroy, having previously been treasurer of the 
King's household ; and, in 1778, the principal commissioner 
for treating, consulting, and agreeing upon the means of quiet- 
ing the divisions subsisting in his Majesty's colonies, planta- 
tions, and possessions in North America. You may read his 
lordship's manifestoes in the Royal New York Gazette. He 
returned to England, having by no means quieted the colonies; 
and speedily afterwards the Royal New York Gazette somehow 
ceased to be published. 

This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one 
of the English fine gentlemen who was wellnigh ruined by the 
awful debauchery and extravagance which prevailed in the 
great English society of those days. Its dissoluteness was 
awful : it had swarmed over Europe after the Peace ; it had 
danced, and raced, and gambled in all the courts. It had 
made its bow at Versailles ; it had run its horses on the plain 
of Sablons, near Paris, and created the Anglomania there : it 
had exported vast quantities of pictures and marbles from 
Rome and Florence : it had ruined itself by building great 
galleries and palaces for the reception of the statues and pic- 
tures : it had brought over singing-women and dancing-women 
from all the operas of Europe, on whom my lords lavished their 
thousands, whilst they left their honest wives and honest chil- 
dren languishing in the lonely, deserted splendors of the castle 
and park at home. 

Besides the great London society of those days, there was 
another unacknowledged world, extravagant beyond measure, 
tearing about in the pursuit of pleasure ; dancing, gambling, 
drinking, singing ; meeting the real society in the public places 
(at Ranelaghs, Vauxhall, and Ridottos, about which our old 
novelists talk so constantly), and outvying the real leaders of 
fashion in luxury, and splendor, and beauty. For instance, 
when the famous Miss Gunning visited Paris as Lady Coven- 
try, where she expected that her beauty would meet with the 
applause which had followed her and her sister through Eng- 
land, it appears she was put to flight by an English lady still 
more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain Mrs. Pitt 
took a box at the opera opposite the Countess ; and was so 
much handsomer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out 
that this was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coven- 
try quitted Paris in a huff. The poor thing died presently of 

» 1856. 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



325 



consumption, accelerated, it was said, by the red and white 
paint with which she plastered those hickless charms of hers. 
(We must represent to ourselves all fashionable female Europe, 
at that time, as plastered with white, and raddled with red.) 
She left two daughters behind her, whom George Selwyn 
loved (he was curiously fond of little children), and who are 
described very drolly and pathetically in these letters, in their 
little nursery, where passionate little Lady Fanny, if she had 
not good cards, flung hers into Lady Mary's face ; and where 
they sat conspiring how they should receive a new mother-in- 
law whom their papa presently brought home. They got on 
very well with their mother-in-law, who was very kind to them ; 
and they grew up, and they were married, and they were both 
divorced afterwards — poor little souls ! Poor painted mother, 
poor society, ghastly in its pleasures, its loves, its revelries ! 

As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak 
about him ; because, though he was a wild and weak com- 
missioner at one time, though he hurt his estate, though he 
gambled and lost ten thousand pounds at a sitting — "five 
times more," says the unlucky gentleman, " than I ever lost 
before \ " though he swore he never would touch a card again ; 
and yet, strange, to say, went back to the table and lost still 
more : yet he repented of his errors, sobered down, and became 
a worthy peer and a good country gentleman, and returned to 
the good wife and the good children whom he had always loved 
with the best part of his heart. He had married at one-and- 
twenty. He found himself, in the midst of a dissolute society, 
at the head of a great fortune. Forced into luxury, and obliged 
to be a great lord and a great idler, he yielded to some tempta- 
tions, and paid for them a bitter penalty of manly remorse ; 
from some others he fled wisely, and ended by conquering them 
nobly. But he always had the good wife and children in his 
mind, and they saved him. " I am very glad you did not come 
to me the morning I left London," he writes to G. Selwyn, as 
he is embarking for America. " I can only say, I never knew 
till that moment of parting, what grief was." There is no 
parting now, where they are. The faithful wife, the kind, gen- 
erous gentleman, have left a noble race behind them : an in- 
heritor of his name and titles, who is beloved as widely as he 
is known j a man most kind, accomplished, gentle, friendly, 
and pure ; and female descendants occupying high stations 
and embellishing great names ; some renowned for beauty, and 
all for spotless lives, and pious matronly virtues. 

Another of Selwyn's correspondents is the Earl of March, 



326 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

afterwards Duke of Queensberr)^, whose life lasted into this 
century ; and who certainly as earl or duke, young man or gray- 
beard, was not an ornament to any possible society. The 
legends about old Q. are awful. In Selwyn, in Wraxall, and 
contemporary chronicles, the observer of human nature may 
follow him, drinking, gambhng, intriguing to the end of his 
career ; when the wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan 
died, as wicked and unrepentant as he had been at the hottest 
season of youth and passion. .There is a house in Piccadilly, 
where they used to show a certain low window at which old Q. 
sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile glasses the 
women as they passed by. 

There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy, 
sleepy George Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present 
credit. " Your friendship," writes Carlisle to him, " is so dif- 
ferent from anything I have ever met with or seen in the world, 
that when I recollect the extraordinary proofs of your kindness, 
it seems to me like a dream." " I have lost my oldest friend 
and acquaintance, G. Selwyn," writes Walpole to Miss Berry : 
" I really loved him, not only for his infinite wit, but for a thou- 
sand good qualities." I am glad, for my part, that such a 
lover of cakes and ale should have had a thousand good quali- 
ties — that he should have been friendly, generous, warm-hearted, 
trustworthy. " I rise at six," writes Carlisle to him, from Spa 
(a great resort of fashionable people in our ancestors' days), 
" play at cricket till dinner, and dance in the evening, till I can 
scarcely crawl to bed at eleven. There is a life for you ! You 
get up at nine ; play with Raton your dog till twelve, in your 
dressing-gown; then creep down to 'White's;' are five hours 
at table ; sleep till supper-time ; and then make two wretches 
carry you in a sedan-chair, with three pints of claret in you, 
three miles for a shilling." Occasionally, instead of sleeping 
at " White's," George went down and snoozed in the House of 
Commons by the side of Lord North. He represented Glouces- 
ter for many years, and had a borough of his own, Ludgershall, 
for which, when he was too lazy to contest Gloucester, he sat 
himself. " I have given directions for the election of Ludgers- 
hall to be of Lord Melbourne and myself," he writes to the 
Premier, whose friend he was, and who was himself as sleepy, 
as witty, and as good-natured as George. 

If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank 
and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, 
and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's fail- 
ings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



327 



voiuptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste 
for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What 
could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great 
fortune, do but be splendid and idle ? In these letters of Lord 
Carlisle's from which I have been quoting, there is many a just 
complaiht made by the kind-hearted young nobleman of the 
state which he is obliged to keep ; the magnitrcence in which 
he must live ; the idleness to which his position as a peer of 
England bound him. Better for him had he been a lawyer at 
his desk, or a clerk in his office ; — a thousand times better 
chance for happiness, education, employment, security from 
temptation. A few years since the profession of arms was the 
only one which our nobles could follow. The church, the bar, 
medicine, literature, the arts, commerce, v/ere below them. It 
is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England : 
the working educated men, away from Lord North's bribery in 
the senate ; the good clergy not corrupted into parasites by 
hopes of preferment ; the tradesmen rising into manly opulence ; 
the painters pursuing their gentle calling : the men of letters in 
their quiet studies ; these are the men whom we love and like 
to read of in the last age. How small the grandees and the 
men of pleasure look beside them !. how contemptible the story 
of the George III. court squabbles are beside the recorded talk 
of dear old Johnson ! What is the grandest entertainment at 
Windsor, compared to a night at the club over its modest cups, 
with Percy and Langton, and Goldsmith, and poor Bozzy at 
the table ? I declare I think, of all the polite men of that age, 
Joshua Reynolds was the finest gentleman. And they were 
good, as well as witty and wise, those dear old friends of the 
past. Their minds were not debauched by excess, or effeminate 
with luxury. They toiled their noble day's labor : they rested, 
and took their kindly pleasure : they cheered their holiday 
meetings with generous wit and hearty interchange of thought : 
they were no prudes, but no blush need follow their conversa- 
tion : they were merry, but no riot came out of their cups. Ah ! 
I would have liked a night at the " Turk's Head," even though 
bad news had arrived from the colonies, and Doctor Johnson 
was growling against the rebels ; to have sat with him and 
Goldy ; and to have heard Burke, the finest talker in the world ; 
and to have had Garrick flashing in with a story from his 
theatre ! — I like, I say, to think of that society j and not merely 
how pleasant and how wise, but how good they were. I think 
it was on going home one night from the club that Edmund 
Burke — his noble soul full of great thoughts, be sure, for they 



328 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

never left him ; his heart full of gentleness — was accosted by a 
poor wandering woman, to whom he spoke words of kindness ; 
and moved by the tears of this Magdalen, perhaps having caused 
them by the good words he spoke to her, he took her home to 
the house of his wife and children, and never left her until he 
had found the means of restoring her to honesty and labor. O 
you fine gentlemen ! you Marches, and Selwyns, and Chester- 
fields, how small you look by the side of these great men ! 
Good-natured Carlisle plays at cricket all day, and dances in 
the evening " till he can scarcely crawl," gayly contrasting his 
superior virtue with George Selvvyn's, " carried to bed by two 
wretches at midnight with three pints of claret in him." Do 
you remember the verses — the sacred verses — which Johnson 
wrote on the death of his humble friend, Levett ? 

" Well tried through many a varying year, 
See Levett to the grave descend ; 
Officious, innocent, sincere, 
Of every friendless name the friend. 

" In misery's darkest cavern known. 
His useful care was ever nigh. 
Where hopeless anguish poured the groan. 
And lonely want retired to die. 

*' No summons mocked by chill delay, 
No petty gain (^Jisdained by pride, 
The modest wants of every day 
The toil of every day supplied. 

" His virtues walked their narrow round, 
Nor made a pause, nor left a void ; 
And sure the Eternal Master found 
His single talent well employed." 

Whose name looks the brightest now, that of Queensberry, the 
wealthy duke, or Selwyn the wit, or Levett the poor physician ? 
I hold old Johnson (and shall we not pardon James Boswell 
some errors for embalming him for us ?) to be the great sup- 
porter of the British monarchy and church during the last age 
— better than whole benches of bishops, better than Pitts, 
Norths, and the Great Burke himself. Johnson had the ear of 
the nation ; his immense authority reconciled it to loyalty, and 
shamed it out of irreligion. When George III. talked with 
him, and the people heard the great author's good opinion of 
the sovereign, whole generations rallied to the King. Johnson 
was revered as a sort of oracle ; and the oracle declared for 
church and king. What a humanity the old man had ! He 
was a kindly partaker of all honest pleasures : a fierce foe to 
all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. " What, boys, are 
you for a frolic ? " he cries, when Topham Beauclerc comes and 
wakes him up at midnight : " I'm with you." And away he 
goes, tumbles on his homely old clothes, and trundles through 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



329 



Covent Garden with the young fellows. When he used to fre- 
quent Garrick's theatre, and had " the liberty of the scenes," 
he says, " All the actresses knew me, and dropped me a curtsey 
as they passed to the stage." That would make a pretty pic- 
ture : it is a pretty picture in my mind, of youth, folly, gayety, 
tenderly surveyed by wisdom's merciful, pure eyes. 

George III. and his Queen lived in a very unpretending 
but elegant-looking house, on the site of the hideous pile under 
which his granddaughter at present reposes. The King's 
mother inhabited Carlton House, which contemporary prints 
represent with a perfect paradise of a garden, with trim lawns, 
green arcades, and vistas of classic statues. She admired 
these in company with my Lord Bute, who had a fine classic 
taste, and sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea in the 
pleasant green arbors along with that polite nobleman. Bute 
was hated with a rage of which there have been few examples 
in English history. He was the butt for everybody's abuse ; 
for Wilkes's devilish mischief ; for Churchill's slashing satire; 
for the hooting of the mob that roasted the boot, his emblem, 
in a thousand bonfires ; that hated him because he was a 
favorite and a Scotchman, calling him " Mortimer," " Lothario," 
I know not what names, and accusing his royal mistress of all 
sorts of crimes — the grave, lean, demure elderly woman, who, I 
dare say, was quite as good as her neighbors. Chatham lent 
the aid of his great malice to influence the popular sentiment 
against her. He assailed, in the House of Lords, " the secret 
influence, more mighty than the throne itself, which betrayed 
and clogged every administration." The most furious pam- 
phlets echoed the cry. " Impeach the King's mother," was 
scribbled over every wall at the Court end of the town, Wal- 
pole tells us. What had she done ? What had Frederick, 
Prince of Wales, George's father, done, that he was so loathed 
by George II. and never mentioned by George III. ? Let us 
not seek for stones to batter that forgotten grave, but acquiesce 
in the contemporary epitaph over him : — 

" Here lies Fred, 
Who was alive, and is dead. 
Had it been his father, 
1 had much rather. 
Had it been his brother, 
Still better than another. 
Had it been his sister, 
No one would have missed her. 
Had it been the whole generation, 
Still better for the nation. 
But since 'tis only Fred, 
Who was alive, and is dead. 
There's no more to be said." 



33<^ 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



The widow with eight children round her, prudently recon- 
ciled herself with the King, and won the old man's confidence 
and good-will. A shrewd, hard, domineering, narrow-minded 
woman, she educated her children according to her lights, and 
spoke of the eldest as a dull, good boy : she kept him very 
close : she held the tightest rein over him : she had curious 
prejudices and bigotries. His uncle, the burly Cumberland, 
taking down a sabre once, and drawing it to amuse the child — 
the boy started back and turned pale. The Prince felt a 
generous shock : " What must they have told him about me ? " 
he asked. 

His mother's bigotry and hatred he inherited with the 
courageous obstinacy of his own race j but he was a firm 
believer where his fathers had been free-thinkers, and a true 
and fond supporter of the Church, of which he was the titular 
defender. Like other dull men, the King was all his life sus- 
picious of superior people. He did not like Fox : he did not 
like Reynolds \ he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke ; he 
was testy at the idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all 
innovators. He loved mediocrities ; Benjamin West was his 
favorite painter; Beattie was his poet. The King lamented, 
not without pathos, in his after life, that his education had been 
neglected. He was a dull lad brought up by narrow-minded 
people. The cleverest tutors in the world could have done 
little probably to expand that small intellect, though they 
might have improved his tastes, and taught his perceptions 
some generority. 

But he admired as well as he could. There is little doubt 
that a letter, written by the little Princess Charlotte of Meck- 
lenburg Strelitz — a letter containing the most feeble common- 
places about the horrors of war, and the most trivial remarks 
on the blessings of peace, struck the young monarch greatly, 
and decided him upon selecting the young Princess as the 
sharer of his throne. I pass over the stories of his juvenile 
loves — of Plannah Lightfoot, the Quaker, to whom they say he 
was actually married (though I don't know who has ever seen 
the register) — of lovely black-haired Sarah Lennox, about 
whose beauty Walpole has written in raptures, and who used 
to lie in wait for the young Prince, and make hay at him on 
the lawn of Holland House. He sighed and he longed, but 
he rode away from her. Her picture still hangs in Holland 
House, a magnificent masterpiece of Reynolds, a canvas 
worthy of Titian, She looks from the castle window, holding 
a bird in her hand, at black-eyed young Charles Fox, her 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



ZZ"^ 



nephew. The royal bird flew away from lovely Sarah. She 
had to figure as bridesmaid at her little Mecklenburg rival's 
wedding, and died in our own time a quiet old lady, who had 
become the mother of the heroic Napiers. 

They say the little Princess who had written the fine letter 
about the horrors of war — a beautiful letter without a single 
blot, for which she was to be rewarded, like the heroine of the 
old spelling-book stor}^ — was at play one day with some of her 
young companions in the gardens of Strelitz, and that the 
young ladies' conversation was, strange to sa}^, about hus- 
bands. " Who will-take such a poor little princess as me?" 
Charlotte "said to her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very 
moment the postman's horn sounded, and Ida said, " Princess! 
there is the sweetheart." As she said, so it actually turned 
out. The postman brought letters from the splendid young 
King of all England, who said, " Princess ! because you have 
written such a beautiful letter, which does credit to your head 
and heart, come and be Queen of Great Britain, France, and 
Ireland, and the true wife of your most obedient servant, 
George I " So she jumped for joy ; and went up stairs and 
packed all her little trunks ; and set off straightway for her 
kingdom in a beautiful yacht, with a harpsichord on board for 
her to play upon, and around her a beautiful fleet, all covered 
with flags and streamers : and the distinguished Madame Auer- 
bach complimented her with an ode, a translation of which may 
be read in the Gentleman^ s Magazine to the present day : — 

" Her jrallant navy through the main 
Now cleaves its Uquid way. 
There to their queen a chosen train 
Of nymphs due reverence pay. 

" Europa, when conveyed by Jove 

To Crete's distinguished shore, 
Greater attention scarce could prove, 
Or be respected more." 

They met, and they were married, and for 5'ears they led 
the happiest, simplest lives sure ever led by married couple. 
It is said the King winced when he first saw his homely little 
bride ; but, however that may be, he was a true and faithful 
husband to her, as she was a faithful and loving wife. They 
had the simplest pleasures — the very mildest and simplest — ■ 
little country dances, to which a dozen couple were invited, and 
where the honest King would stand up and dance for three 
hours at a time to one tune ; after which delicious excitement 
they would go to bed without any supper (the Court people 



332 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



grumbling sadly at that absence of supper), and get up quite 
early the next morning, and perhaps the next night have another 
dance ; or the Queen would play on the spinet — she played 
pretty well, Haydn said — or the King would read to her a 
paper out of the Spectator, or perhaps one of Ogden's sermons. 
O Arcadia ! what a life it must have been ! There used to be 
Sunday drawing-rooms at Court ; but the young King stopped 
these, as he stopped all the godless gambling whereof we have 
made mention. Not that George was averse to any innocent 
pleasures, or pleasures which he thought innocent. He was a 
patron of the arts, after his fashion ; kind and gracious to the 
artists whom he favored, and respectful to their calling. He 
wanted once to establish an Order of Minerva for literary and 
scientific characters ; the knights were to take rank after the 
knights of the Bath, and to sport a straw-colored ribbon and a 
star of sixteen points. But there was such a row amongst the 
literati as to the persons who should be appointed, that the 
plan was given up, and Minerva and her star never came down 
amongst us. 

He objected to painting St. Paul's, as Popish practice ; ac- 
cordingly, the most clumsy heathen sculptures decorate that 
edifice at present. It is fortunate that the paintings, too, were 
spared, for painting and drawing were wofully unsound at the 
close of the last century ; and it is far better for our eyes to 
contemplate whitewash (when we turn them away from the 
clergyman) than to look at Opie's pitchy canvases, or Fuseli's 
livid monsters. 

And yet there is one day in the year — a day when old 
George loved with all his heart to attend it — when I think St. 
Paul's presents the noblest sight in the whole world : when five 
thousand charity children, with cheeks like nosegays, and 
sweet, fresh voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart 
thrill with praise and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand 
sights in the world — coronations, Parisian splendors. Crystal 
Palace openings. Pope's chapels with their processions of long- 
tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani — but think 
in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's 
Day. Non Aiigli, sed angeli. As one looks at that beautiful 
multitude of innocents : as the first note strikes : indeed one 
may almost fancy that cherubs are singing. 

Of church music the King was always very fond, showing 
skill in it both as a critic and a performer. Many stories, 
mirthful and affecting, are told of his behavior at the concerts 
which he ordered. When he was blind and ill he chose the 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



ZZl 



music for the Ancient Concerts once, and the music and words 
which he selected were from " Samson Agonistes," and all 
had reference to his blindness, his captivity, and his affliction. 
He would beat time with his music-roll as they sang the anthem 
in the Chapel Royal. If the page below was talkative or in- 
attentive, down would come the music-roll on young scape- 
grace's powdered head. The theatre was always his delight. 
His bishops and clergy used to attend it, thinking it no shame 
to appear where that good man was seen. He is said not to 
have cared for Shakspeare or tragedy much ; farces and pan- 
tomimes were his joy ; and especially when the clown swallowed 
a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously 
that the lovely Princess by his side would have to say, " My 
gracious monarch, do compose yourself." But he continued to 
laugh, and at the very smallest farces, as long as his poor wits 
were left him. 

There is something to me exceedingly touching in that sim- 
ple early life of the King's. As long as his mother lived — a 
dozen years after his marriage with the little spinet-player — he 
was a great, shy, awkward boy, under the tutelage of that hard 
parent. She must have been a clever, domineering, cruel wo- 
man. She kept her household lonely and in gloom, mistrust- 
ing almost all people who came about her children. Seeing 
the young Duke of Gloucester silent and unhappy once, she 
sharply asked him the cause of his silence. " I am thinking," 
said the poor child. " Thinking, sir ! and of what ? " "I am 
thinking if ever I have a son I will not make him so unhappy 
as you make me." The other sons were all wild, except 
George. Dutifully every evening George and Charlotte paid 
their visit to the King's mother at Carlton House. She had a 
throat-complaint, of which she died ; but to the last persisted 
in driving about the streets to show she was alive. The night 
before her death the resolute woman talked with her son and 
daughter-in-law as usual, went to bed, and was found dead 
there in the morning. " George, be a king ! " were the words 
which she was forever croaking in the ears of her son : and a 
king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to be. 

He did his best \ he worked according to his lights ; what 
virtue he knew, he tried to practise ; what knowledge he could 
master, he strove to acquire. He was forever drawing maps, 
for example, and learned geography with no small care and in- 
dustry. He knew all about the family histories and genealo- 
gies of his gentry, and pretty histories he must have known. 
He knew the whole Army List ; and all the facings, and the 



334 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



exact number of the buttons, and all the tags and laces, and 
the cut of all the cocked hats, pigtails, and gaiters in his army. 
He knew \\\^ perso?uiel of the Universities: what doctors were 
inclined to Socinianism, and who were sound Churchmen ; he 
knew the etiquettes of his own and his grandfather's courts to 
a nicety, and the smallest particulars regarding the routine of 
ministers, secretaries, embassies, audiences ; the humblest page 
in the ante-room, or the meanest helper in the stables or kitchen. 
These parts of the royal business he was capable of learning, 
and he learned. But, as one thinks of an office, almost divine, 
performed by any mortal man — of any single being pretending 
to control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order the implicit 
obedience of brother millions, to compel them into war at his 
offence or quarrel ; to command, " In this way you shall trade, 
in this way you shall think ; these neighbors shall be your allies 
whom you shall help, these others your enemies whom you shall 
slay at my orders ; in this way you shall worship God ; " — who 
can wonder that, when such a man as George took such an 
office on himself, punishment and humiliation should fall upon 
people and chief .-• 

Yet there is something grand about his courage. The 
battle of the King with his aristocracy remains yet to be told 
by the historian who shall view the reign of George more justly 
than the trumpery jDanegyrists who wrote immediately after his 
decease. It was he, with the people to back him, who made 
the war with America ; it was he and the people who refused 
justice to the Roman Catholics ; and on both questions he beat 
the patricians. He bribed : he bullied : he darkly dissembled 
on occasion : he exercised a slippery perseverance, and a vin- 
dictive resolution, which one almost admires as one thinks his 
character over. His courage was never to be beat. It trampled 
North under foot : it beat the stiff neck of the younger Pitt ; 
even his illness never conquered that indomitable spirit. As 
soon as his brain was clear, it resumed the scheme, only laid 
aside when his reason left him : as soon as his hands were out 
of the strait waistcoat, they took up the pen and the plan which 
had engaged him up to the moment of his malady. I believe 
it is by persons believing themselves in the right that nine- 
tenths of the tyranny of this world has been perpetrated. 
Arguing on that convenient premiss, the Dey of Algiers would 
cut off twenty heads of a morning ; Father Dominic would burn 
a score of Jews in the presence of the Most Catholic King, and 
the Archbishops of Toledo and Salamanca sing Amen. Prot- 
estants were roasted, Jesuits hung and quartered at Smith- 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



335 



jfield, and witches burned at Salem, and all by worthy people, 
who believed they had the best authority for their actions. 

And so, with respect to old George, even Americans, whom 
he hated and who conquered him, may give him credit for hav- 
ing quite honest reasons for oppressing them. Appended to 
Lord Brougham's biographical sketch of Lord North are some 
autograph notes of the King, which let us most curiously into 
the state of his mind. " The times certainly require," says he, 
"the concurrence of all who wish to prevent anarchy. I have 
no wish but the prosperity of my own dominions, therefore 1 
must look upon all who would not heartily assist me as bad 
men, as well as bad subjects." That is the way he reasoned. 
*• I wish nothing but good, therefore every man who does not 
agree with me is a traitor and scoundrel." Remember that he 
believed himself anointed by a divine commission ; remember 
that he was a man of slow parts and imperfect education ; that 
the same awful will of Heaven which placed a crown upon his 
head, which made him tender to his family, pure in his life, 
courageous and honest, made him dull of comprehension, ob- 
stinate of will, and at many times deprived him of reason. He 
was the father of his people ; his rebellious children must be 
flogged into obedience. He was the defender of the Protes- 
tant faith ; he would rather lay that stout head upon the block 
than that Catholics should have a share in the government of 
England. And you do not suppose that there are not honest 
bigots enough in all countries to back kings in this kind of 
statesmanship? Without doubt the American war was popular 
in England. In 1775 the address in favor of coercing the col- 
onies was carried by 304 to 105 in the Commons, by 104 to 29 
in the House of Lords. Popular ? — so was the Revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes popular in France : so was the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew : so was the Inquisition exceedingly popu- 
lar in Spain. 

Wars and revolutions are, however, the politicians' prov- 
ince. The great events of this long reign, the statesmen and 
orators who illustrated it, I do not pretend to make the sub- 
jects of an hour's light talk. Let us return to our hum- 
bler duty of court gossip. Yonder sits our little Queen, sur- 
rounded by many stout sons and fair daughters whom she 
bore to her faithful George. The history of the daughters, as 
little Miss Burney has painted them to us, is delightful. They 
were handsome — she calls them beautiful ; they were most 
kind, loving, and ladylike ; they were gracious to every per- 
son, high and low, who served them. They had many little 



33^ 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



accomplishments of their own. This one drew : that one 
played the piano : they all worked most prodigiously, and 
fitted up whole suites of rooms — pretty, smiling Penelopes, 
— with their busy little needles. As we picture to our- 
selves the society of eighty years ago, we must imagine 
hundreds of thousands of groups of women in great high caps, 
tight bodies, and full skirts, needling away, whilst one of the 
number, or perhaps a favored gentleman in a pigtail, reads out 
a novel to the company. Peep into the cottage at Olney, for 
example, and see there Mrs. Unwin and Lady Hesketh, those 
high-bred ladies, those sweet, pious women, and William Cow- 
per, that delicate wit, that trembling pietist, that refined gen- 
tleman, absolutely reading out Jonathan Wild to the ladies ! 
What a change in our manners, in our amusements, since then ! 

King George's household was a model of an English gen- 
tleman's household. It was early ; it was kindly ; it was chari- 
table ; it was frugal ; it was orderly ; it must have been stupid 
to a degree which I shudder now to contemplate. No wonder 
all the princes ran away from the lap of that dreary domestic 
virtue. It always rose, rode, dined at stated intervals. Day 
after day was the same. At the same hour at night the 
King kissed his daughters' jolly cheeks ; the Princesses kissed 
their mother's hand ; and Madame Thielke brought the royal 
nightcap. At the same hour the equerries and women in waiting 
had their little dinner, and cackled over their tea. The King 
had his backgammon or his evening concert ; the equerries 
yawned themselves to death in the anteroom; or the King 
and his family walked on Windsor slopes, the King holding 
his darling little Princess Amelia by the hand ; and the people 
crowded round quite good-naturedly ; and the Eton boys thrust 
their chubby cheeks under the crowd's elbows : and the concert 
over, the King never failed to take his enormous cocked-hat 
off, and salute his band, and say, " Thank you, gentlemen." 

A quieter household, a more prosaic life than this of Kew 
or Windsor, cannot be imagined. Rain or shine, the King 
rode every day for hours ; poked his red face into hundreds of 
cottages round about, and showed that shovel hat and Windsor 
uniform to farmers, to pig-boys, to old women making apple 
dumplings ; to all sorts of people, gentle and simple, about 
whom countless stories are told. Nothing can be more undig- 
nified than these stories. When Haroun Alraschid visits a sub- 
ject incog., the latter is sure to be very much the better for the 
caliph's magnificence. Old George showed no such royal 
splendor. He used to give a guinea sometimes : sometimes feel 




A LITTLE REBEL. 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



337 



in his pockets and find he had no money : often ask a man a 
hundred questions : about the number of his family, about his 
oats and beans, about the rent he paid for his house, and ride 
on. On one occasion he played the part of King Alfred, and 
turned a piece of meat with a string at a cottager's house. 
When the old woman came home, she found a paper with an 
enclosure of money, and a note written by the royal pencil : 
" Five guineas to buy a jack." It was not splendid, but it was 
kind and worthy of Farmer George. One day, when the King and 
Queen were walking together, they met a little boy — they were 
always fond of children, the good folks — and patted the little 
white head. " Whose little boy are you .-' " asked the Windsor 
uniform. " I am the King's beefeater's little boy," replied the 
child. On which the King said, " Then kneel down and kiss 
the Queen's hand." But the innocent offspring of the beefeater 
declined this treat. " No," said he, " I won't kneel, for if I do, 
I shall spoil my new breeches." The thrifty king ought to have 
hugged him and knighted him on the spot. George's admirers 
wrote pages and pages of such stories about him. One morn- 
ing, before anybody else was up, the King walked about Glou- 
cester town; pushed over Molly the housemaid with her pail 
who was scrubbing the doorsteps ; ran up stairs and woke all 
the equerries in their bedrooms ; and then trotted down to the 
bridge, where, by this time, a dozen louts were assembled. 
" What ! is this Gloucester New Bridge ? " asked our gracious 
monarch ; and the people answered him, " Yes, your Majesty." 
" Why, then, my boys " said he, " let us have a huzzay ! " After 
giving them which intellectual gratification, he went home to 
breakfast. Our fathers read these simple tales with fond pleas- 
ure ; laughed at these very small jokes ; liked the old man who 
poked his nose into every cottage ; who lived on plain whole- 
some roast and boiled ; who despised your French kickshaws ; 
who was a true hearty old English gentleman. You may have seen 
Gilray's famous print of him — in the old wig, in the stout old 
hideous Windsor uniform — as the King of Brobdingnag, peer- 
ing at a little Gulliver, whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in 
the other he has an opera-glass, through which he surveys the 
pigmy.'' Our fathers chose to set up George as the type of 
a great king ; and the little Gulliver was the great Napoleon, 
We prided ourselves on our prejudices ; we blustered and 
bragged with absurd vainglory ; we dealt to our enemy a mon- 
strous injustice of contempt and scorn ; we fought him with all 
weapons, mean as well as heroic. There was no lie we would 
not believe ; no charge of crime which our furious prejudice 

22 



338 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

would not credit. I thought at one time of making a collec- 
tion of the lies which the French had written against us, and 
we had published against them during the war: it would be a 
strange memorial of popular falsehood. 

Their Majesties were very sociable potentates : and the 
Court Chronicler tells of numerous visits which they paid to 
their subjects, gentle and simple : with whom they dined ; at 
whose great country-houses they stopped ; or at whose poorer 
lodgings they affably partook of tea and bread-and-butter. Some 
of the great folks spent enormous sums in entertaining their 
sovereigns. As marks of special favor, the King and Queen 
sometimes stood as sponsors for the children of the nobility. 
We find Lady Salisbury was so honored in the year 17S6 ; and in 
the year 1802, Lady Chesterfield. The Court News relates how 
her ladyship received their Majesties on a state bed " dressed 
with white satin and a profusion of lace : the counterpane of 
white satin embroidered with gold, and the bed of crimson satin 
lined with white." The child was first brought by the nurse to 
the Marchioness of Bath, who presided as chief nurse. Then 
the Marchioness handed baby to the Queen. Then the Queen 
handed the little darling to the Bishop of Norwich, the officiating 
clergyman ; and, the ceremony over, a cup of caudle was pre- 
sented by the Earl to his Majesty on one knee, on a large gold 
waiter, placed on a crimson velvet cushion. Misfortunes would 
occur in those interesting genuflectory ceremonies of royal 
worship. Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe, a very fat, puffy 
man, in a most gorgeous court-suit, had to kneel, Cumberland 
says, and was so fat and so tight that he could not get up again. 
"Kneel, sir, kneel !" cried my lord in waiting to a country 
mayor who had to read an address, but who went on with his 
compliment standing. " Kneel, sir, kneel ! " cries my lord, in 
dreadful alarm. " I can't ! " says the mayor, turning round ; 
" don't you see I have got a wooden leg .-' " In the capital 
" Burney Diary and Letters," the home and court life of good 
old King George and good old Queen Charlotte are presented 
at portentous length. The King rose every morning at six : 
and had two hours to himself. He thought it effeminate to 
have a carpet in his bedroom. Shortly before eight, the Queen 
and the royal family were always ready for him, and they pro- 
ceeded to the King's chapel in the castle. There were no fires 
in the passages : the chapel was scarcely alight ; princesses, 
governesses, equerries grumbled and caught cold : but cold or 
hot, it was their duty to go : and, wet or dry, light or dark, the 
stout old George was always in his place to say amen to the 
chaplain. 



GEORGE THE THIRD 339 

The Queen's character is represented in " Burney " at full 
length. She was a sensible, most decorous woman ; a very 
grand lady on state occasions, simple enough in ordinary life ; 
well read as times went, and giving shrewd opinions about 
books ; stingy, but not unjust ; not generally unkind to her 
dependents, but invincible in her notions of etiquette, and quite 
angry if her people suffered ill-health in her service. She gave 
Miss Burney a shabby pittance, and led the poor young woman 
a life which wellnigh killed her. She never thought but that 
she was doing Burney the greatest favor, in taking her from free- 
dom, fame, and competence, and killing her off with languor in 
that dreary court. It was not dreary to her. Had she been 
servant instead of mistress, her spirit would never have broken 
down : she never would have put a pin out of place, or been a 
moment from her duty. She was not weak, and she could not 
pardon those who were. She was perfectly correct in life, and 
she hated poor sinners with a rancor such as virtue sometimes 
has. She must have had awful private trials of her own : not 
merely with her children, but with her husband, in those long 
days about which nobody will ever know anything now ; when 
he was not quite insane ; when his incessant tongue was bab- 
bling folly, rage, persecution ; and she had to smile and be re- 
spectful and attentive under this intolerable ennui. The Queen 
bore all her duties stoutly, as she expected others to bear them. 
At a State christening, the lady who held the infant was tired 
and looked unwell, and the Princess of Wales asked permission 
for her to sit down. " Let her stand," said the Queen, flicking 
the snuff off her sleeve. She would have stood, the resolute 
old woman, if she had had to hold the child till his beard was 
grown. " I am seventy years of age," the Queen said, facing a 
mob of ruffians who stopped her sedan : " I have been fifty 
years Queen of England, and I never was insulted before." 
Fearless, rigid, unforgiving little queen ! I don't wonder that 
her sons revolted from her. 

Of all the figures in that large family group which surrounds 
George and his Queen, the prettiest, I think, is the father's 
darling, the Princess Amelia, pathetic for her beauty, her sweet- 
ness, her early death, and for the extreme passionate tender- 
ness with which her father loved her. This was his favorite 
amongst all the children : of his sons, he loved the Duke of 
York best. Burney tells a sad story of the poor old man at 
Weymouth, and how eager he was to have this darling son with 
him. The King's house was not big enough to hold the Prince \ 
and his father had a portable house erected close to his own, 



340 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



and at huge pains, so that his dear Frederick should be near 
him. He clung on his arm all the time of his visit : talked to 
no one else ; had talked of no one else for some time before. 
The Prince, so long expected, stayed but a single night. He 
had business in London the next day, he said. The dulness of 
the old King's court stupefied York and the other big sons of 
George HI. They scared equerries and ladies, frightened the 
modest little circle, with their coarse spirits and loud talk. Of 
little comfort, indeed, were the King's sons to the King. 

But the pretty Amelia was his darling ; and the little maiden, 
prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a 
sweet image to look on. There is a family picture in Burney, 
which a man must be very hard-hearted not to like. She de- 
scribes an after-dinner walk of the royal family at Windsor : — 
"It was really a mighty pretty procession," she says. "The 
little Princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat 
covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and 
fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted with the parade, 
and turning from side to side to see everybody as she passed ; 
for all the terracers stand up against the walls, to make a clear 
passage for the royal family the moment they come in sight. 
Then followed the King and Queen, no less delighted with the 
joy of their little darling. The Princess Royal leaning on 
Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, the Princess Augusta holding by 
the Duchess of Ancaster, the Princess Elizabeth led by Lady 
Charlotte Bertie, followed. Office here takes place of rank," 
says Burney, — to explain how it was that Lady E. Waldegrave, 
as lady of the bedchamber, walked before a duchess ; — "Gen- 
eral Bude, and the Duke of Montague, and Major Price as 
equerry, brought up the rear of the procession."' One sees it ; 
the band playing its old music, the sun shining on the happy, 
loyal crowd ; and lighting the ancient battlements, the rich elms, 
and purple landscape, and bright greensward ; the royal stand- 
ard drooping from the great tower yonder ; as old George 
passes, followed by his race, preceded by the charming infant, 
who caresses the crowd with her innocent smiles. 

" On sight of Mrs. Delany, the King instantly stopped to 
speak to her ; the Queen, of course, and the little Princess, and 
all the rest, stood still. They talked a good while with the 
sweet old lady, during which time the King once or twice ad- 
dressed himself to me. I caught the Queen's eyes, and saw in 
it a little surprise, but by no means any displeasure, to see me 
of the party. The little Princess went up to Mrs. Delany, of 
whom she is very fond, and behaved like a little angel to her. 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



341 



She then, with a look of inquiry and recollection, came behind 
Mrs. Delany to look at me. ' I am afraid,' said 1, in a whisper, 
and stooping down, 'your Royal Highness does not remember 
me ? ' Her answer was an arch little smile, and a nearer ap- 
proach, with her lips pouted out to kiss me." 

The Princess wrote verses herself, and there are some pretty 
plaintive lines attributed to her, which are more touching than 
better poetry : — 

" Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, 

I laughed, and danced, and talked and sung 
And, proud of health, of freedom vain, 
Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain ; 
Concluding, io those hours of glee, 
That all the world was made for me. 

" But when the hour of trial came, 

When sickness shook this trenibling frame, 
When folly's gay pursuits were o'er. 
And I could sing and dance no mo'^e, 
It then occurred, how sad 'twould be, 
Were this world only made for me." 

The poor soul quitted it — and ere yet she was dead the 
agonized father was in such a state, that the officers round 
about him were obliged to set watchers over him, and from 
November, 18 10, George III. ceased to reign. All the world 
knows the story of his malady : all history presents no sadder 
figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, 
wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imag- 
inary parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly 
courts. I have seen his picture as it was taken at this time, 
hanging in the apartment of his daughter, the Landgravine of 
Hesse Hombourg — amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a 
hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor 
old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard 
falling over his breast — the star of his famous Order still idly 
shining on it. He was not only sightless : he became utterly 
deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the 
pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some 
slight lucid moments he had ; in one of which, the Queen, 
desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a 
hymn, and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. Whet^ 
he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and 
then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a 
prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy 
calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to sub- 
mit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled. 

What preacher need moralize on this story ; what words 
save the simplest are requisite to tell it ? It is too terrible for 



342 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in sub- 
mission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch 
Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser 
of life, death, happiness, victory. " O brothers," I said to those 
who heard me first in America, — " O brothers ! speaking the 
same dear mother tongue — O comrades ! enemies no more, let 
us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal 
corpse, and call a truce to battle ! Low he lies to whom the 
proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the 
poorest : dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off 
his throne ; buffeted by rude hands ; with his children in 
revolt ; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely ; 
our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, ' Cordelia, 
Cordelia, stay a little ! ' 

' Vex not his ghost — oh! let him pass — he hates him 
That would upon the rack of this tough world 
Stretch him out longer! ' 

Hush ! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave ! Sound, 
trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon his 
pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy." 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



In Twisss amusing " Life of Eldon/' we read how, on the 
death of the Duke of York, the old chancellor became pos- 
sessed of a. lock of the defunct Prince's hair ; and so careful 
was he respecting the authenticity of the relic, that Bessy 
Eldon his wife sat in the room with the young maji from Ham- 
let's, who distributed the ringlet into separate lockets, which 
each of the Eldon family afterwards wore. You know how, 
when George IV. came to Edinburgh, a better man than he 
went on board the royal yacht to welcome the King to his king- 
dom of Scotland, seized a goblet from which his Majesty had 
just drunk, vowed it should remain forever as an heirloom in 
his family, clapped the precious glass in his pocket, and sat 
down on it and broke it when he got home. Suppose the good 
sheriff's prize unbroken now at Abbotsford, should we not 
smile with something like pity as we beheld it ? Suppose one 
of those lockets of the no-Popery Prince's hair offered for sale 
at Christie's, quot lihras educe summo invenies ? how many pounds 
would you find for the illustrious Duke ? Madame Tussaud 
has got King George's coronation robes ; is there any man now 
alive who would kiss the hem of that trumpery ? He sleeps 
since thirty years : do not any of you, who remember him, 
wonder that you once respected and huzza'd and admired 
him ? 

To make a portrait of him at first seemed a matter of small 
difficulty. There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance 
simpering under it : with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could 
at this very desk perform a recognizable likeness of him. And 
yet after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him 
through old magazines and newspapers, having him here at a 
ball, there at a public dinner, there at races and so forth, you 
find you have nothing — nothing but a coat and a wig and a 

(343) 



344 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



mask smiling below it — nothing but a great simulacrum. His 
sire and grandsires were men. One knows what they were 
like : what they would do in given circumstances : that on 
occasion they fought and demeaned themselves like tough good 
soldiers. They had friends whom they liked according to their 
natures ; enemies whom they hated fiercely ; passions, and 
actions, and individualities of their own. The sailor King who 
came after George was a man : the Duke of York was a man, 
big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. But this George, 
what was he ? I look through all his life, and recognize but a 
bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk 
stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, 
a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief prodigiously 
scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown wigs reeking with 
oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, underwaistcoats, 
more underwaistcoats, and then nothing, I know of no senti; 
ment that he ever distinctly uttered. Documents are published 
under his name, but people wrote them — private letters, but 
people spelt them. He put a great George P. or George R. at 
the bottom of the page and fancied he had written the paper : 
some bookseller's clerk, some poor author, some man did the 
work ; saw to the spelling, cleaned up the slovenly sentences, 
and gave the lax maudlin slipslop a sort of consistency. He 
must have had an individuality : the dancing-master whom he 
emulated, nay, surpassed — the wig-maker who curled his toupee 
for him — the tailor who cut his coats, had that. But, about 
George, one can get at nothing actual. That outside, I am 
certain, is pad and tailor's work ; there may be something 
behind, but what ? We cannot get at the character ; no doubt 
never shall. Will men of the future have nothing better to do 
than to unswathe and interpret that royal old mummy ? I own 
I once used to think it would be good sport to pursue him, fas- 
ten on him, and pull him down. But now I am ashamed to 
mount and lay good dogs on, to summon a full field, and then 
to hunt the poor game. 

On the 1 2th August, 1762, the forty-seventh anniversary of 
the accession of the House of Brunswick to the English throne, 
all the bells in London pealed in gratulation, and announced 
that an heir to George HI. was born. Five days afterwards 
the King was pleased to pass letters patent under the great 
seal, creating H. R. H. the Prince of Great Britain, Electoral 
Prince of Brunswick Liineburg, Duke of Cornwall and Roth- 
say, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and 
Great Steward of Scotland, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



345 



All the people at his birth thronged to see this lovely child ; 
and behind a gilt china-screen railing in St. James's Palace, in 
a cradle surmounted by the three princely ostrich -feathers, the 
royal infant was laid to delight the eyes of the lieges. Among 
the earliest instances of homage paid to him, I read that " a 
curious Indian bow and arrows were sent to the Prince from 
his father's faithful subjects in New York." He was fond of 
playing with these toys : an old statesman, orator, and wit of 
his grandfather's and great-grandfather's time, never tired of 
his business, still eager in his old age to be well at court, used 
to play with the little Prince, and pretend to fall down dead 
when the Prince shot at him with his toy bow and arrows — and 
get up and fall down dead over and over again — to the in- 
creased delight of the child. So that he was flattered from 
his cradle upwards ; and before his little feet could walk, states- 
men and courtiers were busy kissing them. 

There is a pretty picture of the royal infant — a beautiful 
buxom child — asleep in his mother's lap : who turns round and 
holds a finger to her lip, as if she would bid the courtiers around 
respect the baby's slumbers. From that day until his decease, 
sixty-eight years after, I si/(ppose there were more pictures 
taken of that personage than of any other human being who 
ever was born and died — in every kind of uniform and every 
possible court-dress — in long fair hair, with powder, with and 
without a pig-tail — in every conceivable cocked-hat — in dragoon 
uniform — in Windsor uniform — in a field-marshal's clothes — in 
a Scotch kilt and tartans, with dirk and claymore (a stupendous 
figure) — in a frogged frock-coat with a fur collar and tight 
breeches and silk stockings — in wigs of every color, fair, brown, 
and black — in his famous coronation robes finally, with which 
performance he was so much in love that he distributed copies 
of the picture to all the courts and British embassies in Europe, 
and to numberless clubs, town-halls, and private friends. I 
remember as a young man how almost every dining-room had 
his. portrait. 

There is plenty of biographical tattle about the Prince's 
boyhood. It is told with what astonishing rapidity he learned 
all languages, ancient and modern ; how he rode beautifully, 
sang charmingly, and played elegantly on the violoncello. 
That he was beautiful was patent to all eyes. He had a high 
spirit ; and once, when he had had a difference with his father, 
burst into the royal closet and called out, " Wilkes and liberty 
forever ! " He was so clever, that he confounded his very 
governors in learning ; and one of them. Lord Bruce, having 



346 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



made a false quantity in quoting Greek, the admirable young 
Prince instantly corrected him. Lord Bruce could not remain 
a governor after this humiliation ; resigned his ofifice, and, to 
soothe his feelings, was actually promoted to be an earl ! It is 
the most wonderful reason for promoting a man that ever I 
heard. Lord Bruce was made an earl for a blunder in prosody; 
and Nelson was made a baron for the victory of the Nile. 

Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and mil- 
lions which in the course of his brilliant existence this single 
Prince consumed. Besides his income of 50,000/., 70,000/., 
100,000/., 120,000/., a year, we read of three applications to 
Parliament : debts to the amount of 160,000/., of 650,000/. ; 
besides mysterious foreign loans, .whereof he pocketed the 
proceeds. What did he do for all this money ? Why was he 
to have it .'' If he had been a manufacturing town, or a popu- 
lous rural district, or an army of five thousand men, he would 
not have cost more. He, one solitary stout man, who did not 
toil, nor spin, nor fight, — what had any mortal done that he 
should be pampered so ? 

In 17S4, when he was twenty-one years of age, Carlton 
Palace was given to him, and furnished by the naiion with as 
much luxury as could be devised. His pockets were filled 
with money : he said it was not enough ; he flung it out of 
window: he spent 10,000/. a year for the coats on his back. 
The nation gave him more money, and more, and more. The 
sum is past counting. He was a prince most lovely to look on, 
and was christened Prince Florizel on his first appearance in 
the world. That he was the handsomest prince in the whole 
world was agreed by men, and alas ! by many women. 

I suppose he must have been very graceful. There are so 
many testimonies to the charm of his manner, that we must 
allow him great elegance and powers of fascination. He, and 
the King of France's brother, the Count d'Artois, a charming 
young Prince who danced deliciously on the tight-rope — a poor 
old tottering exiled King, who asked hospitality of King 
George's successor, and lived awhile in the palace of Mary 
Stnart — divitled in their youth the title of first gentleman of 
Europe. We in England of course gave the prize to our gen- 
tleman. Until George's death the propriety of that award was 
scarce questioned, or the doubters voted rebels and traitors. 
Only the other day I was reading in the reprint of the delightful 
" Noctes " of Christopher North. The health of THE KING 
is drunk in large capitals by the loyal Scotsman. You would 
fancy him a hero, a sage, a statesman, a pattern for kings and 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



347 



men. It was Walter Scott who had that accident with the 
broken glass I spoke of anon. He was the king's Scottish 
champion, rallied all Scotland to him, made loyalty the fashion, 
and laid about him fiercely with his claymore upon all the 
Prince's enemies. The Brunswicks had no such defenders as 
those two Jacobite commoners, old Sam Johnson the Lichfield 
chapman's son, and Walter Scott, the Edinburgh lawyer's. 

Nature and circumstance had done their utmost to prepare 
the Prince for being spoiled : the dreadful dulness of papa's 
court, its stupid amusements, its dreary occupations, the mad- 
dening humdrum, the stifling sobriety of its routine, would have 
made a scapegrace of a much less lively prince. All the big 
princes bolted from that castle of ennici where old King George 
sat, posting up his books and droning over his Handel ; and 
old Queen Charlotte over her snuff and her tambour-frame. 
Most of the sturdy, gallant sons settled down after sowing 
their wild oats, and became sober subjects of their father and 
brother — not ill-liked by the nation, which pardons youthful 
irregularities readily enough, for the sake of pluck, and unaffect- 
edness, and good-humor. 

The boy is the father of the man. Our Prince signalized 
his entrance into the world by a feat worthy of his future life. 
He invented a new shoebuckle. It was an inch long and five 
inches broad. " It covered almost the whole instep, reaching 
down to the ground on either side of the foot." A sweet 
invention ! lovely and useful as the Prince on whose foot it 
sparkled. At his first appearance at a court ball, we read 
that " his coat was pink silk, with white cuffs ; his waistcoat 
white silk, embroidered with various-colored foil, and adorned 
with a profusion of French paste. And his hat was orna- 
mented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand in number, 
with a button and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a new 
military style." What a Florizel ! Do these details seem 
trivial ? They are the grave incidents of his life. His biog- 
raphers say that when he commenced housekeeping in that 
splendid new palace of his, the Prince of Wales had some 
windy projects of encouraging literature, science, and the arts ; 
of having assemblies of literary characters ; and Societies for 
the encouragement of geography, astronomy and botany. As- 
tronomy, geography, and botany ! Fiddlesticks ! French bal- 
let-dancers, French cooks, horse-jockeys, buffoons, procurers, 
tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, china, jewel, and gimcrack 
merchants — these were his real companions. At first he made 
a pretence of having Burke and Fox and Sheridan for his 



348 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



friends. But how could such men be serious before such an 
empty scapegrace as this lad ? Fox might talk dice with him, 
and Sheridan wine ; but what else had these men of genius in 
common with their tawdry young host of Carlton House ? That 
fribble the leader of such men as Fox and Burke 1 That man's 
opinions about the constitution, the India Bill, justice to the 
Catholics — about any question graver than the button for a 
waistcoat or the sauce for a partridge — worth anything ! The 
friendship between the Prince and Whig chiefs was impossible. 
They were hypocrites in pretending to respect him, and if he 
broke the hollow compact between them, who shall blame him ? 
His natural companions were dandies and parasites. He 
could talk to a tailor or a cook ; but, as the equal of great states- 
men, to set up a creature, lazy, weak, indolent, besotted, of 
monstrous vanity, and levity incurable — it is absurd. They 
thought to use him, and did for awhile ; but they must have 
known how timid he was ; how entirely heartless and treacher- 
ous, and have expected his desertion. His next set of friends 
were mere table companions, of whom he grew tired too ; then 
we hear of him with a very few select toadies, mere boys from 
school or the Guards, whose sprightliness tickled the fancy of 
the worn-out voluptuary. What matters what friends he had .-• 
He dropped all his friends ; he never could have real friends. 
An heir to the throne has flatterers, adventurers who hang 
about him, ambitious men who use him ; but friendship is 
denied him. 

And women, I suppose, are as false and selfish in their 
dealmgs with such a character as men. Shall we take the 
Leporello part, flourish a catalogue of the conquests of this 
royal Don Juan, and tell the names of the favorites to whom, 
one after the other, George Prince flung his pocket-handker- 
chief .'' What purpose would it answer to say how Perdita was 
pursued, won, deserted, and by whom succeeded.? What good 
in knowing that he did actually marry Mrs. Fitz-Herbert ac- 
cording to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church ; that her 
marriage settlements have been seen in London ; that the 
names of the witnesses to her marriage are known. This sort 
of vice that we are now come to presents no new or fleeting 
trait of manners. Debauchees, dissolute, heartless, fickle, 
.cowardly, have been ever since the world began. This one 
had more temptations than most, and so much may be said in 
extenuation for him. 

It was an unlucky thing for this doomed one, and tending 
to lead him yet farther on the road to the deuce, that, besides 





THK KEGEXX. 



J. 790 




THE KING. 




GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



349 



being lovely, so that women were fascinated by him ; and heir- 
apparent, so that all the world flattered him ; he should have a 
beautiful voice, which led him directly in the way of drink : and 
thus all the pleasant devils were coaxing on poor Florizel ; de- 
sire, and idleness, and vanity, and drunkenness, all clashing 
their merry cymbals and bidding him come on. 

We first hear of his warbling sentimental ditties under the 
walls of Kew Palace by the moonlight banks of Thames, with 
Lord Viscount Leporello keeping watch lest the music should 
be disturbed. 

Singing after dinner and supper was the universal fashion of 
the day. You may fancy all England sounding with choruses, 
some ribald, some harmless, but all occasioning consumption of 
a prodigious deal of fermented liquor. 

" The jolly Muse her wuigs to try no frolic flights need take, 
But round the bowl would dip and fly, like swallows round a lake," 

sang Morris in one of his gallant Anacreontics, to which the 
Prince many a time joined in chorus, and of which the burden 
is — 

" And that I think's a reason fair to drink and fill again." 

This delightful boon companion of the Prince's found " a 
reason fair " to forego filling and drinking, saw the error of 
his ways, gave up the bowl and chorus, and died retired and reli- 
gious. The Prince's table no doubt was a very tempting one. 
The wits came and did their utmost to amuse him. It is won- 
derful how the spirits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an 
aroma, when a great man is at the head of the table. Scott, 
the loyal cavalier, the king's true liegeman, the very best ra- 
conteur of his time, poured out with an endless generosity his 
store of old-world learning, kindness, and humor. Grattan 
contributed to it his wondrous eloquence, fancy, feeling. Tom 
Moore perched upon it for awhile, and piped his most exquisite 
little love-tunes on it, flying away in a twitter of indignation 
afterwards, and attacking the Prince with bill and claw. In 
such society, no wonder the sitting was long, and the butler 
tired of drawing corks. Remember what the usages of the 
time were, and that William Pitt, coming to the House of Com- 
mons after having drunk a bottle of port-wine at his own 
house, would go into Bellamy's with Dundas, and help finish a 
couple more. 

You peruse volumes after volumes about our Prince, and 
find some half-dozen stock stories — indeed not many more — 
common to all the histories. He was good-natured ; an indo- 



35° 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



lent, voluptuous prince, not unkindly. ' One story, the most fa- 
vorable to him of all, perhaps, is that as Prince Regent he was 
eager to hear all that could be said in behalf of prisoners con- 
demned to death, and anxious, if possible, to remit the capital 
sentence. He was kind to his servants. There is a story 
common to all the biographies, of Molly the housemaid, who, 
when his household was to be broken up, owing to some re- 
forms which he tried absurdly to practise, was discovered cry- 
ing as she dusted the chairs because she was to leave a master 
who had a kind word for all his servants. Another tale is that 
of a groom of the Prince's being discovered in corn and oat 
peculations, and dismissed by the personages at the head of 
the stables ; the Prince had word of John's disgrace, remon- 
strated with him very kindly, generously reinstated him, and 
bade him promise to sin no more — a promise which John kept. 
Another story is ver}' fondly told of the Prince as a young man 
hearing of an officer's family in distress, and how he straight- 
way borrowed six or eight hundred pounds, put his long fair 
hair under his hat, and so disguised carried the money to the 
starving family. He sent money, too, to Sheridan on his death- 
bed, and would have sent more had not death ended the career 
of that man of genius. Besides these, there are a few pretty 
speeches, kind and graceful, to persons with whom he was 
brought in contact. But he turned on twenty friends. He was 
fond and familiar with them one day, and he passed them on 
the next without recognition. He used them, liked them, 
loved them perhaps in his way, and then separated from them. 
On Monday he kissed and fondled poor Perdita, and on Tues- 
day he met her and did not know her. On Wednesday he was 
very affectionate with that wretched Brummell, and on Thurs- 
day forgot him ; cheated him even out of his snuff-box which 
he owed the poor dandy ; saw him years afterwards in his 
downfall and poverty, when the bankrupt Beau sent him an- 
other snuff-box, with some of the snuff he used to love, as a pit- 
eous token of remembrance and submission, and the King 
took the snuff, and ordered his horses and drove on, and had 
not the grace to notice his old companion, favorite, rival, enemy, 
superior. In Wraxall there is some gossip about him. When 
the charming, beautiful, generous Duchess of Devonshire died 
— the lovely lady whom he used to call his dearest duchess 
once, and pretend to admire as all English society admired her 
— he said, " Then we have lost the best bred woman in Eng- 
land." " Then we have lost the kindest heart in England," 
said noble Charles Fox. On another occasion, when three 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



3J^I 



noblemen were to receive the Garter, says Wraxall, " A great 
personage observed that never did three men receive the order 
in so characteristic a manner. The Duke of A. advanced to 
the sovereign with a phlegmatic, cold, awkward air like a clown ; 
Lord B. came forward fawning and smiling like a courtier ; 
Lord C. presented himself easy, unembarrassed, like a gentle- 
man ! " These are the stories one has to recall about the 
Prince and King — kindness to a housemaid, generosity to a 
groom, criticism on a bow. There are no better stories about 
him : they are mean and trivial, and they characterize him. 
The great war of empires and giants goes on. Day by day 
victories are won and lost by the brave. Torn, smoky flags 
and battered eagles are wrenched from the heroic enemy and 
laid at his feet ; and he sits there on his throne and smiles, 
and gives the guerdon of valor to the conqueror. He! EUiston 
the actor, when the Coronation was performed, in which he 
took the principal part, used to fancy himself the King, burst 
into tears, and hiccough a blessing on the people. I believe it is 
certain about George IV., that he had heard so much of the 
war, knighted so many people, and worn such a prodigious 
quantity of marshal's uniforms, cocked-hats, cock's feathers, 
scarlet and bullion in general, that he actually fancied he had 
been present in some campaigns, and, under the name of Gen- 
eral Brock, led a tremendous charge of the German legion at 
Waterloo. 

He is dead but thirty years, and one asks how a great 
society could have tolerated him ? Would Ave bear him now } 
In this quarter of a century, what a silent revolution has been 
working ! how it has separated us from old times and manners ! 
How it has changed men themselves ! I can see old gentlemen 
now among us, of perfect good breeding, of quiet lives, with 
venerable gray heads, fondling their grandchildren ; and look 
at them, and wonder at what they were once. That gentleman 
of the grand old school, when he was in the loth Hussars, and 
dined at the Prince's table, would fall under it night after night. 
Night after night, that gentleman sat at Brookes's or Raggett's 
over the dice. If, in the petulance of play or drink, that gen- 
tleman spoke a sharp word to his neighbor, he and the other 
would infallibly go out and try to shoot each other the next 
morning. That gentleman would drive his friend Richmond 
the black boxer down to Moulsey, and hold his coat, and shout 
and swear, and hurrah with delight, whilst the black man was 
beating Dutch Sam the Jew. That gentleman would take a 
manly pleasure in pulling his own coat off, and thrashing a 



352 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



bargeman in a street row. That gentleman has been in a 
watch-house. That gentleman, so exquisitely polite with ladies 
in a drawing-room, so loftily courteous, if he talked now as he 
used among men in his youth, would swear so as to make your 
hair stand on end. I met lately a very old German gentleman, 
who had served in our army at the beginning of the century. 
Since then he has lived on his own estate, but rarely meeting 
with an Englishman, whose language — the language of fifty 
years ago that is — he possesses perfectly. When this highly 
bred old man began to speak English to me, almost every other 
\yord he uttered was an oath : as they used (they swore dread- 
fully in Flanders) with the Duke of York before Valenciennes, 
or at Carlton House over the supper and cards. Read Byron's 
letters. So accustomed is the young man to oaths that he em- 
ploys them even in writing to his friends, and swears by the 
post. Read his account of the doings of young men at Cam- 
bridge, of the ribald professors, one of whom " could pour out 
Greek like a drunken Helot," and whose excesses surpassed 
even those of the young men. Read Matthews' description of 
the boyish lordling's housekeeping at Newstead, the skull-cap 
passed round, the monk's dresses from the masquerade ware- 
house, in which the young scapegraces used to sit until daylight, 
chanting appropriate songs round their wine. " We come to 
breakfast at two or three o'clock," Matthews says. " There are 
gloves and foils for those who like to amuse themselves, or we 
fire pistols at a mark in the hall, or we worry the wolf. " A 
jolly life truly ! The noble young owner of the mansion writes 
about such affairs himself in letters to his friend, Mr. John 
Jackson, pugilist, in London. 

All the Prince's time tells a similar strange story of manners 
and pleasure. In Wraxall we find the Prime Minister himself, 
the redoubted William Pitt, engaged in high jinks with person- 
ages of no less importance than Lord Thurlow the Lord Chan- 
cellor, and Mr. Dundas the Treasurer of the Navy. Wraxall 
relates how these three statesmen, returning after dinner from 
Addiscombe, found a turnpike open and galloped through it with- 
out paying the toll. The -turnpike man, fancying they were 
highwaymen, fired a blunderbuss after them, but missed them ; 
and the poet sang, — 

" How as Pitt wandered darkling o'er the plain, 
His reason drown'd in Jenkinson's champagne, 
A rustic's hand, but righteous fate withstood, 
Had shed a premier's for a robber's blood." 

Here we have the Treasurer of the Navy, the Lord High Chan- 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



353 



cellor, and the Prime Minister, all engaged in a most undoubted 
lark. In Eldon's " Memoirs," about the very same time, I read 
that the bar loved wine, as well as the woolsack. Not John 
Scott himself ; he was a good bo}' alwaj's ; and though he loved 
port-wine, loved his business and his duty and his fees a great 
deal better. 

He has a Northern Circuit story of those days, about a 
party at the house of a certain Lawyer Fawcett, who gave a 
dinner every year to the counsel. 

" On one occasion," related Lord Eldon, " I heard Lee say, 
*I cannot leave Fawcett's wine. Mind, Davenport, you will 
go home immediately after dinner, to read the brief in that 
cause that we have to conduct to-morrow.'" 

" ' Not I,' said Davenport. ' Leave my dinner and my wine 
to read a brief! No, no, Lee ; that won't do.' 

" ' Then,' said Lee, ' what is to be done ? who else is em-^ 
ployed ? ' 

" Davenport. — ' Oh ! young Scott.' 

" Lcc. — ' Oh ! he must go. Mr. Scott, you must go home 
immediately, and make yourself acquainted with that cause, 
before our consultation this evening.' 

" This was very hard upon me ; but I did go, and there was 
an attorney from Cumberland, and one from Northumberland, 
and I do not know how many other persons. Pretty late, in 
came Jack Lee, as drunk as he could be. 

" ' I cannot consult to-night ; I must go to bed,' he exclaim- 
ed, and away he went. Then came Sir Thomas Davenport. 

"'We cannot have a consultation to-night, Mr. Wordsworth* 
(Wordsworth, I think, was the name ; it was a Cumberland 
name), shouted Davenport. Don't you see how drunk Mr, 
Scott is ? it is impossible to consult.' Poor me ! who had 
scarce had any dinner, and lost all my wine — I was so drunk that 
I could not consult ! Well, a verdict was given against us, and 
it was all owing to Lawyer Fawcett's dinner. We moved for a 
new trial ; and I must say, for the honor of the bar, that those 
two gentlemen, Jack Lee and Sir Thomas Davenport, paid all 
the expenses between them of the first trial. It is the only 
instance I ever knew ; but they did. We moved for a new 
trial (on the ground, I suppose, of the counsel not being in their 
senses), and it was granted. When it came on, the following 
year, the judge rose and said, — 

" ' Gentlemen, did any of you dine with Lawyer Fawcett 
yesterday ? for, if you did, I will not hear this cause till next 
year.' 

23 



2-4 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

"There was great laughter. We gained the cause that 
time." 

On another occasion, at Lancaster, where poor Bozzy must 
needs be going the Northern Circuit, " we found him," says 
Mr. Scott, " lying upon the pavement inebriated. We sub- 
scribed a guinea at supper for him, and a half-crown for his 
clerk " — (no doubt there was a large bar, so that Scott's joke did 
not cost him much), — " and sent him, when he waked next 
morning, a brief, with instructions to move for what we de- 
nominated the writ of quare adhcesit pavimejito ? with observations 
duly calculated to induce him to think that it required great 
learning to explain the necessity of granting it, to the judge 
before whom he was to move." Boswell sent all round the 
town to attorneys for books that might enable him to distinguish 
himself — but in vain. He moved, however, for the writ, making 
the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The 
judge was perfectly astonished, and the audience amazed. The 
judge said, " 1 never heard of such a writ — what can it be that 
SLclheres pavimenio ? Are any of you gentlemen at the bar able to 
explain this ? " 

The bar laughed. At last one of them said, — 

"My lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhcesit pavimento. 
There was no moving him for some time. At last he was car- 
ried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the 
pavement." 

The canny old gentleman relishes these jokes. When the 
Bishop of Lincoln was moving from the deanery of St. Paul's, 
he says he asked a learned friend of his, by name Will Hay, 
how he should move some especially fine claret, about which he 
was anxious. 

" Pray, my lord bishop," says Hay, "how much of the wine 
have you ? " 

The bishop said six dozen. 

"If that is all," Hay answered, "you have but to ask me 
six times to dinner, and I will carry it all away myself." 

There were giants in those days ; but this joke about wine 
is not so fearful as one perpetrated by Orator Thelwall, in the 
heat of the French Revolution, ten years later, over a frothing 
pot of porter. He blew the head off, and said, " This is the 
way I would serve all kings." 

Now we come to yet higher personages, and find their doings 
recorded in the blushing pages of timid little Miss Burney's 
" Memoirs." She represents a prince of the blood in quite a 
royal condition. The loudness, the bigness, boisterousness, 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



355 



creaking boots and rattling oaths of the young princes, appear 
to have frightened the prim household of Windsor, and set all 
the teacups twittering on the tray. On the night of a ball and 
birthday, when one of the pretty, kind princesses was to come 
out, it was agreed that her brother, Prince William Henry, 
should dance the opening minuet with her, and he came to 
visit the household at their dinner. 

" At dinner, Mrs. Schwellenberg presided, attired magnifi- 
cently ; Miss Goldsworthy, Mrs. Stanforth, Messrs. Du Luc 
and Stanhope, dined with us ; and while we were still eating 
fruit, the Duke of Clarence entered. 

" He was just risen from the King's table, and waiting for 
his equipage to go home and prepare for the ball. To give you 
an idea of the energy of his Royal Highness's language, I 
ought to set apart an objection to writing, or rather intimating, 
certain forcible words, and beg leave to show you in genuine 
colors a royal sailor. 

" We all rose, of course, upon his entrance, and the two 
gentlemen placed themselves behind their chairs, while the 
footmen left the room. But he ordered us all to sit down, and 
called the men back to hand about some wine. He was in ex- 
ceeding high spirits, and in the utmost good-humor. He placed 
himself at the head of the table, next Mrs. Schwellenberg, and 
looked remarkably well, gay, and full of sport and mischief; 
yet clever withal, as well as comical. 

" ' Well, this is the first day I have ever dined with the King 
at St. James's on his birthday. Pray, xiave you all drunk his 
Majesty's health?' 

" ' No, your Royal Highness ; your Royal Highness might 
make dem do dat,' said Mrs. Schwellenberg. 

" ' Oh, by , I will ! Here, you ' (to the footman), 

'bring champagne ; I'll drink the King's health again, if I die 
for it. Yes, I have done it pretty well already ; so has the 
King, I promise you ! I believe his Majesty was never taken 
such good care of before ; we have kept his spirits up, I prom- 
ise you \ we have enabled him to go through his fatigues ; and 
I should have done more still, but for the ball and Mary ; — I 
have promised to dance with Mary. I must keep sober for 
Mary. '" 

Indefatigable Miss Burney continues for a dozen pages re- 
porting H. R. H.'s conversation, and indicating, with a humot 
not unworthy of the clever little author of " Evelina," the in- 
creasing state of excitement of the young sailor Prince, who 
drank more and more champagne, stopped old Mrs. Schwellen- 



356 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

berg's remonstrances by giving the old lady a kiss, and telling 
her to hold her potato-trap, and who did not " keep sober for 
Mary." Mary had to find another partner that night, for the 
royal William Henry could not keep his legs. 

Will you have a picture of the amusements of another royal 
prince } It is the Duke of York, the blundering general, the 
beloved commander-in-chief of the army, the brother with whom 
George IV. had had many a midnight carouse, and who con- 
tinued his habits of pleasure almost till death seized his stout 
body. 

In Piickler Muskau's " Letters," that German Prince de- 
scribes a bout with H. R. H., who in his best time was such a 
powerful toper that "six bottles of claret after dinner scarce 
made a perceptible change in his countenance." 

" I remember," says Piickler, " that one evening, — indeed, 
it was past midnight, — he took some of his guests, among whom 
were the Austrian ambassador. Count Meervelt Count Berol- 
dingen, and myself, into his beautiful armory. We tried to 
swing several Turkish sabres, but none of us had a very firm 
grasp ; whence it happened that the Duke and Meervelt both 
scratched themselves with a sort of straight Indian sword so as 
to draw blood. Meervelt then wished to try if the sword cut 
as well as a Damascus, and attempted to cut through one of 
the wax candles that stood on the table. The experiment an- 
swered so ill, that both the candles, candlesticks and all, fell to 
the ground and were extinguished. While we were groping in 
the dark and trying to find the door, the Duke's aide-de-camp 
stammered out in great agitation, ' By G — , sir, I remember 
the sword is poisoned ! ' 

" You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded 
at this intelligence ! Happily, on further examination, it ap- 
peared that claret, and not poison, was at the bottom of the 
colonel's exclamation." 

And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, 
in which Clarence and York, and the very highest personage of 
the realm, the great Prince Regent, all play parts. The feast 
took place at the Pavilion at Brighton, and was described to 
me by a gentleman who was present at the scene. In Gilray's 
caricatures, and amongst Fox's jolly associates, there figures a 
great nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called Jockey of Norfolk 
in his time, and celebrated for his table exploits. He had 
quarrelled with the Prince, like the rest of the Whigs ; but a 
sort of reconciliation had taken place ; and now, being a very 
old man, the Prince invited him to dine and sleep at the Pa- 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



357 



vilion, and the old Duke drove over from his Castle of Arundel 
with his famous equipage of gray horses, still remembered in 
Sussex. 

The Prince of Wales had concocted with his royal brothers 
a notable scheme for making the old man drunk. Every per^ 
son at table was enjoined to drink wine w'ith the Duke — a 
challenge which the old toper did not refuse. He soon began 
to see that there was a conspiracy against him ; he drank glass 
for glass ; he overthrew many of the brave. At last the First 
Gentleman of Europe proposed bumpers of brandy. One of 
the royal brothers filled a great glass for the Duke. He stood 
up and tossed off the drink. " Now," says he, " I will have mv 
carriage, and go home." The Prince urged upon him his pre- 
vious promise to sleep under the roof where he had been so 
generously entertained. " No," he said ; he had had enough 
of such hospitality. A trap had been set for him ; he would 
leave the place at once and never enter its doors more. 

The carriage was called, and came ; but, in the half-hour's 
interval, the liquor had proved too potent for the old man ; his 
hosts generous purpose was answered, and the Duke's old gray 
head lay stupefied on the table. Nevertheless, when his post- 
chaise was announced, he staggered to it as well as he could, 
and stumbling in, bade the postilions drive to Arundel. They 
drove him for half an hour round and round the Pavilion lawn ; 
the poor old man fancied he was going home. When he awoke 
that morning he was in bed at the Prince's hideous house at 
Brighton. You may see the place now for sixpence : they have 
fiddlers there every day ; and sometimes buffoons and mounte- 
banks hire the Riding House and do their tricks and tumbling 
there. The trees are still there, and the gravel walks round 
which the poor old sinner was trotted. I can fancy the flushed 
faces of the royal princes as they support themselves at the 
portico pillars, and look on at old Norfolk's disgrace ; but I 
can't fancy how the man who perpetrated it continued to be 
called a gentleman. 

From drinking, the pleased Muse now turns to gambling, of 
which in his youth our Prince was a great practitioner. He 
was a famous pigeon for the play-men ; they lived upon him. 
Egalite' Orleans, it was believed, punished him severely. A 
noble lord, whom we shall call the Marquis of Steyne, is said 
to have mulcted him in immense sums. He frequented the 
clubs, where play was then almost universal ; and, as it was 
known his debts of honor were sacred, whilst he was gambling 
Jews waited outside to purchase his notes of hand. His trans- 



3^8 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

actions on the turf were unlucky as well as discreditable : 
though I believe he, and his jockey, and his horse. Escape, 
were all innocent in that affair whicli created so much scandal. 

Arthur's, Almack's, Bootle's, and White's were the chief 
clubs of the young men of fashion. There was play at all, and 
decayed noblemen and broken-down senators fleeced the un- 
wary there. In Selwyn's " Letters " we find Carlisle, Devon- 
shire, Coventry, Queensberr}^, all undergoing the probation. 
Charles Fox, a dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late times 
— lost 200,000/. at play. Gibbons tells of his playing for twenty- 
two hours at a sitting, and losing 500/. an hour. That indom- 
itable punter said that the greatest pleasure in life, after win- 
ning, was losing. What hours, what nights, what health did he 
waste over the devil's books ! I was going to say what peace 
of mind ; but he took his losses very philosophically. After an 
awful night's play, and the enjoyment of the greatest pleasure 
but one in life, he was found on a sofa tranquilly reading an 
Eclogue of Virgil. 

Play survived long after the wild Prince and Fox had given 
up the dice-box. The dandies continued it. Byron, Brummell 
■ — how many names could I mention of men of the world who 
have suffered by it ! In 1837 occurred a famous trial which 
pretty nigh put an end to gambling in England. A peer of the 
realm was found cheating at whist, and repeatedly seen to prac- 
tise the trick called sauter la coupe. His friends at the clubs 
saw him cheat, and went on playing with him. One greenhorn, 
who had discovered his foul play, asked an old hand what he 
should do. "Do," said the Mammon of Unrighteousness, 
'■'■ Back hi77i., yoic fool. ^'' The best efforts were made to screen 
him. People wrote him anonymous letters and warned him ; 
but he would cheat, and they were obliged to find him out. 
Since that day, when my lord's shame was made public, the 
gaming-table has lost all its splendor. Shabby Jews and black- 
legs prowl about race-courses and tavern parlors, and now and 
then inveigle silly yokels with greasy packs of cards in railroad 
cars ; but Play is a deposed goddess, her worshippers bankrupt 
and her table in rags. 

So is another famous British institution gone to decay — the 
Ring : the noble practice of British boxing, which in my youth 
was still almost flourishing. 

The Prince, in his early days, was a great patron of this 
national sport, as his grand-uncle Culloden Cumberland had 
been before him ; but being present at a fight at Brighton, 
where one of the combatants was killed, the Prince pensioned 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



359 



the boxer's widow, and declared he never would attend another 
battle. " But, nevertheless," — I read in the noble language of 
Pierce Egan (whose smaller work on Pugilism I have the honor 
to possess), — "he thought it a manly and decided English 
feature, which ought not to be destroyed. His Majesty had a 
drawing of the sporting characters in the Fives' Court placed 
in his boudoir, to remind him of his former attachment and sup- 
port of true courage ; and when any light of note occurred 
after he was king, accounts of it were read to him by his desire." 
That gives one a fine image of a king taking his recreation ; — 
at ease in a royal dressing-gown ; — too majestic to rea<l himself, 
ordering the prime minister to read him accounts of battles : 
how Cribb punched Molyneux's eye, or Jack Randall thrashed 
the Game Chicken. 

"^here my Prince did actually distinguish himself was in 
driving. He drove once in four hours and a half from Brighton 
to Carlton House — fifty-six miles. All the young men of that day 
were fond of that sport. But the fashion of rapid driving 
deserted England ; and, I believe, trotted over to America. 
Where are the amusements of our 3'outh .-* I hear of no gambling 
now but amongst obscure ruffians ; of no boxing but amongst 
the lowest rabble. One solitary four-in-hand still drove round 
the parks in London last year ; but that charioteer must soon 
disappear. He was very old ; he was attired after the fashion 
of the year 1825. He must drive to the banks of Styx ere long, 
— where the ferry-boat waits to carry him over to the defunct 
revellers who boxed and gambled and drank and drove with 
King George. 

The bravery of the Brunswicks, that all the family must 
have it, that George possessed it, are points which all English 
v/riters have agreed to admit ; and yet I cannot see how George 
IV. should have been endowed with this quality. Swaddled in 
feather-beds all his life, lazy, obese, perpetually eating and 
drinking, his education was quite unlike that of his tough old 
progenitors. His grandsires had confronted hardship and war, 
and ridden up and fired their pistols undaunted into the face of 
death. His father had conquered luxury and overcome indo- 
lence. Here was one who never resisted any temptation ; 
never had a desire but he coddled and pampered it ; if ever 
he had any nerve, frittered it away among cooks, and tailors, 
and barbers, and furniture-mongers, and opera-dancers. What 
muscle would not grow flaccid in such a life — a life that was 
never strung up to any action — an endless Capua without any 
campaign — all fiddling and flowers, and feasting, and flattery, 



360 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

and folly ? When George III. was pressed by the Catholic 
question and the India Bill, he said he would retire to Hanover 
rather than yield upon either point ; and he would have done 
what he said. But, before yielding, he was determined to fight 
his Ministers and Parliament ; and he did, and he beat them. 
The time came when George IV. was pressed too upon the 
Catholic claims ; the cautious Peel had slipped over to that 
side ; the grim old Wellington had joined it ; and Peel tells us, 
in his " Memoirs," what was the conduct of the King. He at 
first refused to submit ; whereupon Peel and the Duke offered 
their resignations, whicli their gracious master accepted. He 
did these two gentlemen the honour. Peel says, to kiss them 
both when they went away. (Fancy old Arthur's grim counte- 
nance and eagle beak as the monarch kisses it !) When they 
were gone he sent after them, surrendered, and wrote to ^lem 
a letter begging them to remain in office, and allowing them to 
have their way. Then his Majesty had a meeting with Eldon, 
which is related at curious length in the latter's " Memoirs." 
He told Eldon what was not true about his interview with the 
new Catholic converts ; utterly misled the old ex-Chancellor ; 
cried, whimpered, fell on his neck, and kissed him too. We 
know old Eldon's own tears were pumped very freely. Did these 
two fountains gush together ? I can't fancy a behavior more 
unmanly, imbecile, pitiable. This a defender of the faith ! 
This a chief in the crisis of a great nation ! This an inheritor 
of the courage of the Georges ! 

Many of my hearers no doubt have journeyed to the pretty 
old town of Brunswick, in company with that most worthy, pru- 
dent, and polite gentleman, the Earl of Malmesbury, and 
fetched away Princess Caroline for her longing husband, the 
Prince of Wales. Old Queen Charlotte would have had her 
eldest son marry a niece of her own, that famous Louisa of 
Strelitz, afterwards Queen of Prussia, and who shares with 
IMarie Antoinette in the last age the sad pre-eminence of beauty 
and misfortune. But George III. had a niece at Brunswick : 
she was a richer princess than her Serene Plighness of Strelitz : 
— in fine, the Princess Caroline was selected to marry the heir 
to the English throne. We follow my Lord Malmesbury in 
quest of her ; we are introduced to her illustrious father and 
royal mother ; we witness the balls and fetes of the old court ,• 
we are presented to the Princess herself, with her fair hair, hei 
blue eyes, and her impertinent shoulders — a lively, bouncing, 
romping Princess, who takes the advice of her courtly English 
mentor most generously and kindly. We can be present at her 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 361 

very toilette, if we like ; regarding which, and for very good 
reasons, the British courtier implores her to be particular. What 
a strange court ! What a queer privacy of morals and manners do 
we look into ! Shall we regard it as preachers and moralists, and 
cry Woe, against the open vice and selfishness and corruption; or 
look at it as we do at the king in the pantomime, with his pan- 
tomime wife and pantomime courtiers, whose big heads he knocks 
together, whom he pokes with his pantomime sceptre, whom 
he orders to prison under the guard of his pantomime beef- 
eaters, as he sits down to dine on his pantomime pudding ? 
It is grave, it is sad; it is theme most curious for moral and 
political speculation ; it is monstrous, grotesque, laughable, 
with its prodigious littlenesses, etiquettes, ceremonials, sham 
moralities ; it is serious as a sermon, and as absurd and outra- 
geous as Punch's puppet-show. 

Malmesbury tells us of the private life of the Duke, Princess 
Caroline's father, who was to die, like his warlike son, in arms 
against the French ; presents us to his courtiers, his favorite ; 
his Duchess, George III.'s sister, a grim old Princess, who took 
the British envoy aside, and told him wicked old stories of 
wicked old dead people and times ; who came to England after- 
wards when her nephew was regent, and lived in a shabby fur- 
nished lodging, old, and dingy, and deserted, and grotesque, 
but somehow royal. And we go with him to the Duke to de- 
mand the Princess's hand in form, and we hear the Brunswick 
guns fire their adieux of salute, as PI. R. H. the Princess of Wales 
departs in the frost and snow, and we visit the domains of the 
Prince Bishop of Osnaburg — the Duke of York of our early 
time ; and we dodge about ^ from the French revolutionists, 
whose ragged legions are pouring over Holland and Germany, 
and gayly trampling down the old world to the tune of ^a ira ; 
and we take shipping at Slade, and we land at Greenwich, 
where the Princess's ladies and the Prince's ladies are in wait- 
ing to received her royal Highness. 

What a history follows ! Arrived in London, the bridegroom 
hastened eagerly to receive his bride. When she was first 
presented to him. Lord Malmesbury says she very properly 
attempted to kneel. He raised her gracefully enough, em- 
braced her, and turning round to me, said, — 

'• Harris, I am not well ; pray get me a glass of brandy." 

I said, " Sir, had you not better have a glass of water ? " 
Upon which, much out of humor, he said with an oath, " No ; 
I will go to the Queen." 

What could be expected from a wedding which had such a 



362 T^HE FOUR GEORGES. 

beginning — from such a bridegroom and such a bride ? I am 
not going to carry you through the scandal of that stor}% or 
follow the poor Princess through all her vagaries ; her balls 
and her dances, her travels to Jerusalem and Naples, her jigs, 
and her junketings, and her tears. As I read her trial in historj^, 
I vote she is not guilty. I don't say it is an impartial verdict ; 
but as one reads her story the heart bleeds for the kindly, gener- 
ous, outraged creature. If wrong there be, let it lie at his door 
who wickedly thrust her from it. Spite of her follies, the great 
hearty people of England loved, and protected, and pitied her. 
" God bless you ! we will bring your husband back to you," 
said a mechanic one day, as she told Lady Charlotte Bury 
with tears streaming down her cheeks. They could not bring 
that husband back ; they could not cleanse that selfish heart. 
Was hers the only one he had wounded ? Steeped in selfish- 
ness, impotent for faithful attachment and manly enduring love, 
— had it not survived remorse, was it not accustomed to de- 
sertion ? 

Malmesbury gives us the beginning of the marriage story ; 
— how the Prince reeled into chapel to be married ; how he 
hiccoughed out his vows of fidelity — you know how he kept 
them ; how he pursued the woman whom he had married ; to 
what a state he brought her ; with what blows he struck her ; 
with what malignity he pursued her ; what his treatment of his 
daughter was , and what his own life. He the first gentleman 
of Europe ! There is no stronger satire on the proud English 
society of that day, than that they admired George. 

No, thank God, we can tell of better gentlemen ; and 
whilst our eyes turn away, shocked, from this monstrous image 
of pride, vanity, weakness, they may see in that England over 
which the last George pretended to reign, some who merit in- 
deed the title of gentleman, some who make our hearts beat 
when we hear their names, and whose memory we fondly salute 
when that of yonder imperial manikin is tumbled into oblivion. 
I will take men of my own profession of letters. I will take 
Walter Scott, who loved the King, and who was his sword and 
buckler, and championed him like that brave Highlander in 
his own story, who fights round his craven chief. WJiat a 
good gentleman ! What a friendly soul, what a generous hand, 
what an amiable life was that of the noble Sir Walter ! I will 
take another man of letters, whose life I admire even more, — 
an English worthy, doing his duty for fifty noble years of labor, 
day by day storing up learning, day by day working for scant 
wages, most charitable out of his small means, bravely faithful 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 363 

to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn from his 
path for popular praise or princes' favor; — I mean Robert 
Southey. We have left his old political landmarks mile's and 
miles behind ; we protest against his dogmatism ; nay, we 
begin to forget it and his politics : but I hope his life will not 
be forgotten, for it is sublime in its simplicity, its energy, its 
honor, its affection. In the combat between Time and Thai- 
aba, I suspect the former destroyer has conquered. Kehama's 
curse frightens very few readers now ; but Southey's private 
letters are worth piles of epics, and are sure to last among us, 
as long as kind hearts like to sympathize with goodness and 
purity, and love and upright life. " If your feelings are like 
mine," he writes to his wife, " I will not go to Lisbon without 
you, or I will stay at home, and not part from you. For though 
not unhappy when away, still without you I am not happy. 
For your sake, as well as my own and little Edith's, I will not 
consent to any separation ; the growth of a year's love between 
her and me, if it please God she should live, is a thing too 
delightful in itself, and too valuable in its consequences, to be 
given up for any light inconvenience on your part or mine. 
* # # On these things we will talk at leisure ; only, dear, 
dear Edith, we must not pa7-t ! ''' 

This was a poor literary gentleman. The First Gentleman in 
Europe had a wife and daughter too. Did he love them so ? 
Was he faithful to them ? Did he sacrifice ease for them, 
or show them the sacred example of religion and honor? 
Heaven gave the great English Prodigal no such good fortune. 
Peel proposed to make a baronet of Southey ; and to this ad- 
vancement the King agreed. The poet nobly rejected the 
offered promotion. 

"I have," he wrote, "a pension of 200/. a year, conferred 
upon me by the good offices of my old friend C. Wynn, and I 
have the laureateship. The salary of the latter was immediately 
appropriated, as far as it went, to a life-insurance for 3,000/., 
which, with an earlier insurance, is the sole provision I have 
made for my family. All beyond must be derived from my own 
industry. Writing for a livelihood, a livelihood is all that I have 
gained ; for, having also something better in view, and never, 
therefore, having courted popularity, nor written for the mere 
sake of gain, it has not been possible for me to lay by any- 
thing. Last year, for the first time in my life, I was provided 
with a year's expenditure beforehand. This exposition may 
show how unbecoming and unwise it would be to accept the 
rank which, so greatly to my honor, you have solicited for me." 



364 "^^E FOUR GEORGES. 

How noble his poverty is, compared to the wealth of bis 
master ! His acceptance even of a pension was made the ob- 
ject of his opponents' satire : but think of the merit and mod- 
esty of this State pensioner ; and that other enormous drawer 
of public money, who receives 100,000/. a year, and comes to 
Parliament with a request for 650,000/. more ! 

Another true knight of those days was Cuthbert Colling- 
wood ; and I think, since heaven made gentlemen, there is no 
record of a better one than that. Of brighter deeds, I grant 
you, we may read performed by others ; but where of a nobler, 
kinder, more beautiful life of duty, of a gentler, truer heart ? 
Beyond dazzle of success and blaze of genius, I fancy shining 
a hundred and a hundred times higher, the sublime purity of 
Collingwood's gentle glory. His heroism stirs British hearts 
when we recall it. His love, and goodness, and piety make 
one thrill with happy emotion. As one reads of him and his 
great comrade going into the victory with which their names 
are immorality connected, how the old English word comes 
up, and that old English feeling of what I should like to call 
Christian honor! What gentlemen they were, what great 
hearts they had ! " We can, my dear Coll," writes Nelson to 
him, " have no little jealousies ; we have only one great object 
in view, — that of meeting the enemy, and getting a glorious 
peace for our country." At Trafalgar, when the " Royal Sover- 
eign" was pressing alone into the midst of the combined fleets, 
Lord Nelson said to Captain Blackwood : " See how that noble 
fellow, Collingwood, takes his ship into action ! How I envy 
him ! " The very same throb and impulse of heroic generosity 
was beating in Collingwood's honest bosom. As he led into 
fight, he said : " What would Nelson give to be here ! " 

After the action of the ist of June, he writes : — " We cruised 
for a few days, like disappointed people looking for what they 
could not find, until the morning of little SaraJC s birthday, between 
eight and nine o'clock, when the French fleet, of twenty-five 
sail of the line, was discovered to win-dward. We chased them, 
and they bore down within about five miles of us. The night 
was spent in watching and preparation for the succeeding day ; 
and many a blessing did I send forth to my Sarah, lest I 
should never bless her more. At dawn, we made our approach 
on the enemy, then drew up, dressed our ranks, and it was 
about eight when the admiral made the signal for each ship 
to engage her opponent, and bring her to close action ; and 
then down we went under a crowd of sail, and in a manner 
that would have animated the coldest heart, and struck terror 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



365 



into the most intrepid enemy. The ship we were to engage 
was two ahead of the French admiral, so we had to go through 
his fire and that of two ships next to him, and received all 
their broadsides two or three times, before we fired a gun. It 
was then near ten o'clock. I observed to the admiral, rhat 
about that time our wives were going to church, but that I 
thought the peal we should ring about the Frenchman's ear 
would outdo their parish bells." 

There are no words to tell what the heart feels in reading 
the simple phrases of such a hero. Here is victory and cour- 
age, but love sublimer and superior. Here is a Christian sol- 
dier spending the night before battle in watching and prepar- 
ing for the succeeding day, thinking of his dearest home, and 
sending many blessings forth to his Sarah, " lest he should 
never bless her more." Who would not say Amen to his sup- 
plication ? It was a benediction to his country — the prayer of 
that intrepid loving heart. 

We have spoken of a good soldier and good men of letters 
as specimens of English gentlemen of the age just past : may 
we not also — many of my elder hearers, I am sure, have read, 
and fondly remember his delightful story — speak of a good di- 
vine, and mention Reginald Heber as one of the best of Eng- 
lish gentlemen ? The charming poet, the happy possessor of 
all sorts of gifts and accomplishments, birth, wit, fame, high 
character, competence — he was the beloved parish priest in his 
own home of Hoderel, " counselling his people in their troubles, 
advising them in their difficulties, comforting them in distress, 
kneeling often at their sick beds at the hazard of his own life ; 
exhorting, encouraging where there was need ; where there was 
strife the peace-maker ; where there was want the free giver." 

When the Indian bishopric was offered to him he refused at 
first ; but after communing with himself (and committing his 
case to the quarter whither such pious men are wont to carry 
their doubts), he withdrew his refusal, and prepared himself for 
his mission and to leave his beloved parish. " Little children, 
love one another, and forgive one another," were the last 
sacred words he said to his weeping people. He parted with 
them, knowing, perhaps, he should see them no more. Like 
those other good men of whom we have just spoken, love and 
duty were his life's aim. Happy he, happy they who were so 
gloriously faithful to both ! He writes to his wife those charm- 
ing lines on his journey : — 

" If thou, my love, wert by my side, my babies at my knee, 
How gladly would our pinnace glide o'er Gunga's mimic sea 1 



366 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

I miss thee at the dawriing gray, when, on our deck reclined, 
In careless ease my limbs 1 lay and woo the cooler wind. 

I miss thee when by Gunga's stream my twilight steps I guide ; 
But most beneath the lamp's pale beam 1 miss thee by my side. 

I spread my books, my pencil try, the lingering noon to cheer ; 
But miss thy kind approving eye, thy meek attentive ear. 

But when of mom and eve the star beholds me on my knee, 
I feel, though thou art distant far, thy prayers ascend for me. 

Then on ! then on ! where duty leads my course be onward still,— 
O'er broad Hindostan's sultry meads, o'er bleak Almorah's hill. 

That course nor Delhi's kingly gates, nor wild Malwah detain, 
For sweet the bliss us both awaits by yonder western main. 

Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, across the dark blue sea: 
But ne'er were hearts so bhtheandgay as there shall meet in thee! " 

Is it not Collingwoocl and Sarah, and Southey and Edith ? 
His affection is part of his life. What were life without it ? 
Without love, I can fancy no gentleman. 

How touching is a remark Heber makes in his " Travels 
through India," that on inquiring of the natives at a town, 
which of the governors of India stood highest in the opinion of 
the people, he found that, though Lord Wellesley and Warren 
Hastings were honored as the two greatest men who had ever 
ruled this part of the world, the people spoke with chief affec- 
tion of Judge Cleaveland, who had died, aged twenty-nine, in 
1784. The people have built a monument over him, and still 
hold a religious feast in his memory. So does his own country 
still tend with a heart's regard the memory of the gentle 
Heber. 

And Cleaveland died in 1784, and is still loved by the 
heathen, is he? Why, that year 1784 was remarkable in the 
life of our friend the First Gentleman of Europe. Do you not 
know that he was twenty-one in that year, and opened Carlton 
House with a grand ball to the nobility and gentry, and doubt- 
less wore that lovely pink coat which we have described. I 
was eager to read about the ball, and looked to the old mag- 
azines for information. The entertainment took place on the 
loth February. In the Eiirop:an Magazme of March, 1784, I 
came straightway upon it : — 

"The alterations at Carlton House being finished, we lay 
before our readers a description of the state apartments as they 
appeared on the loth instant, when H. R. H. gave a grand ball 
to the principal nobility and gentry. ***** The en- 
trance to the state-room fills the mind with an inexpressible 
idea of greatness and splendor. 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 367 

'* The state chair is of a gold frame, covered with crimson 
damask ; on each corner of the feet is a lion's head, expressive 
of fortitude and strength ; the feet of the chair have serpents 
twining round them, to denote wisdom. Facing the throne, 
appears the helmet of Minerva ; and over the windows, glory 
is represented by Saint George with a superb gloria. 

" But the saloon may be styled the chef-cV muvre., and in 
every ornament discovers great invention. It is hung with a 
figured lemon satin. The window-curtains, sofas, and chairs 
are of the same color. The ceiling is ornamented with emble- 
matical paintings, representing the Graces and Muses, together 
with Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, and Paris. Two ortnolu chan- 
deliers are placed here. It is impossible by expression to do 
justice to the extraordinary workmanship, as well as design, of 
the ornaments. They each consist of a palm, branching out 
in five directions for the reception of lights. A beautiful figure 
of a rural nymph is represented entwining the stems of the tree 
with wreaths of flowers. In the centre of the room is a rich 
chandelier. To see this apartment dans son plies beau jour /\\. 
should be viewed in the glass over the chimney-piece. The 
range of apartments from the saloon to the ball-room, when the 
doors are open, formed one of the grandest spectacles that 
ever was beheld." 

In the Gentleman^s Magazine, for the very same month and 
year — March, 1784 — is an account of another festival, in which 
another great gentleman of English extraction is represented as 
taking a principal share : — 

" According to order, H. E. the Commander-in-Chief was 
admitted to a public audience of Congress ; and being seated, 
the President, after a pause, informed him that the United 
States assembled were ready to receive his communications. 
Whereupon he arose, and spoke as follows : — 

" ' Mr. President, — The great events on which my resigna- 
tion depended having at length taken place, I present myself 
before Congress to surrender into their hands the trust com- 
mitted to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the 
service of my country. 

" ' Happy in the confirmation of our independence and 
sovereignty, I resign the appointment I accepted with diffi- 
dence ; which, hov.'ever, was superseded by a confidence in the 
rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the 
nation, and the patronage of Heaven. I close this last act of 
my official life, by commending the interests of our dearest 
country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have 



368 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

the superintendence of them to His holy keeping. Having 
finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre 
of action ; and, bidding an affectionate farewell to this august 
body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer 
my commission and take my leave of the employments of my 
public life.' To which the President replied : — 

" ' Sir, having defended the standard of liberty in the New 
World, having taught a lesson useful to those who inflict and 
those who feel oppression, you retire with the blessings of your 
fellow-citizens ; though the glory of your virtues will not ter- 
minate with your military command, but will descend to remotest 
ages.' " 

Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed ; — 
the opening feast of Prince George in London, or the resigna- 
tion of Washington ? Which is the noble character for after 
ages to admire ; — yon fribble dancing in lace and spangles, or 
yonder hero who sheathes his sword after a life of spotless 
honor, a purity unreproached, a courage indomitable, and a 
consummate victory ? Which of these is the true gentleman ? 
What is it to be a gentleman .? Is it to have lofty aims, to 
lead a pure life, to keep your honor virgin ; to have the esteem 
of your fellow-citizens, and the love of your fireside ; to bear 
good fortune meekly ; to suffer evil with constancy ; and through 
evil or good to maintain truth always ? Show me the happy 
man whose life exhibits these qualities, and him we will salute 
as gentleman, whatever his rank may be : show me the prince 
who possesses them, and he may be sure of oui love and loyalty. 
The heart of Britain still beats kindly for George III., — not 
because he was wise and just, but because he was pure in life, 
honest in intent, and because according to his lights he wor- 
shipped heaven. I think we acknowledge in the inheritrix of 
his sceptre, a wiser rule and a life as honorable and pure ; and I 
am sure the future painter of our manners will pay a willing 
allegiance to that good life, and be loyal to the memory of that 
unsullied virtue. 



THE END OF "THE FOUR GEORGES, 



THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS 

OF THE 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS 

OF THE 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



SWIFT. 

In treating of the English humorists of the past age, it is 
of the men and of their Uves, rather than of their books, that 
I ask permission to speak to you ; and in doing so, you are 
aware that I cannot hope to entertain you with a mfirely humor- 
ous or facetious story. Harlequin without his mask is known 
to present a very sober countenance, and was himself, the story 
goes, the melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go' 
and see Harlequin* — a man full of cares and perplexities like 
the rest of us, whose Self must always be serious to him, under 
whatever mask or disguise or uniform he presents it to the 
public. And as all of you here must needs be grave when you 
think of your own past and present, you will not look to find, 
in the histories of those whose lives and feelings I am going to 
try and describe to you, a story that is otherwise than serious, 
and often very sad. If Humor only meant laughter, you would 
scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers than about 
the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who pos- 
sesses in common with these the power of making you laugh. 
But the men regarding whose lives and stories your kind pres- 
ence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal 
to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere 
sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken 
and direct your love, your pity, your kindness — 3'our scorn for 

* The anecdote is frequently told of our performer Rich. 

U7') 



372 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



untruth, pretension, imposture — your tenderness for the weak, 
the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his 
means and abiUty he comments on all the ordinary actions and 
passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week- 
day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and 
speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem him — • 
sometimes love him. And, as his business is to mark other 
people's lives and peculiarities, we moralize upon his life when 
he is gone — and yesterday's preacher becomes the text for to- 
day's sermon. 

Of English parents, and of a good English family of clergy- 
men,* Swift was born in Dublin in 1667, seven months after 
the death of his father, who had come to practise there as a 
lawyer. The boy went to school at Kilkenny, and afterwards 
to Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a degree with diffi- 
culty, and was wild, and witty, and poor. In 1688, by the 
recommendation of his mother. Swift was received into the 
family of Sir William Temple, who had known Mrs. Swift in 
Ireland. He left his patron in 1694, and the next year took 
orders in Dublin. But he threw up the small Irish preferment 
which he got and returned to Temple, in whose family he re- 
mained until Sir William's death in 1699. His hopes of 
advancement in England failing, Swift returned to Ireland, and 
took the living of Laracor. Hither he invited Hester John- 
son,! Temple's natural daughter, with whom he had contracted 
a tender friendship, while they were both dependants of 
Temple's. And with an occasional visit to England, Swift now 
passed nine years at home. 

* He was from a younger branch of the Swifts of Yorkshire. His grandfather, 
the Rev. Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich, in Herefordsliire, suffered for his loyalty 
in Charles I.'s tmie. That gentleman married Elizabeth Dryden, a member of the 
family of the poet. Sir Walter Scott gives, with his characteristic minuteness in 
such points, the exact relationship between these famous men. Swift was ''the son 
of Dryden's second cousin.'' Swift, too, was the enemy of Dryden's reputation. 
Witness the " Battle of the Books : " — " The difference was greatest among the 
horse," says he of the modems, " where every private trooper pretended to the com- 
mand, from Tasso and Milton to Dryden and Withers." And in " Poetry, a Rhap 
sody '' he advises the poetaster to — 

" Read all the Prefaces of Dryden, 
For these our critics much confide in, 
Though merely writ, at first for filling, 
To raise the volume's price a shilling." 

" Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet," was the phrase of Dryden to his kins- 
man, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such matters. 

t " Miss Hetty " she was called in the family — where her face, and her dress, and 
Sir William's treatment of her, all made the real fact about her birth plain enough. 
Sir William left her a thousand pounds. 



SWIFT. 



373 



In 1709 he came to England, and, with a brief visit to Ire- 
land, during which he took possession gf his deanery of St. 
Patrick's, he now passed five years in England, taking the most 
distinguished part in the political transactions which terminated 
with the death of Queen Anne. After her death, his party 
disgraced, and his hopes of ambition over, Swift returned to 
Dublin, where he remained twelve years. In this time he wrote 
the famous " Drapier's Letters " and " Gulliver's Travels." He 
married Hester Johnson, Stella, and buried Esther Vanhom- 
righ, Vanessa, who had followed him to Ireland from London, 
where she had contracted a violent passion for him. In 1726 
and 1727 Swift was in England, which he quitted for the last 
time on hearing of his wife's illness. Stella died in January, 
1728, and Swift not until 1745, having passed the last five of 
the seventy-eight years of his life with an impaired intellect 
and keepers to watch him.* 

You know, of course, that Swift has had many biographers ; 
his life has been told by the kindest and most good-natured of 
men, Scott, who admires but can't bring himself to love him ; 
and by stout old Johnson,t who, forced to admit him into the 
company of poets, receives the famous Irishman, and takes off 
his hat to him with a bow of surly recognition, scans him from 
head to foot, and passes over to the other side of the street. 

* Sometimes, during his mental affliction, he continued walking about the house 
for many consecutive hours ; sometimes he remained in a kind of torpor. At times, 
he would seem to struggle to bring into dist'nct consciousness, and shape into ex- 
pression, the intellect that lay smothering under gloomy obstruction in him. A pier- 
glass falling by accident, nearly fell on him. He said he wished it had ! He once 
repeated slowly several times, " I am what I am.'' The last thing he wrote was an 
epigram on the building of a magazine for arms and stores, which was pointed out to 
him as he went abroad during his mental disease : — 

" Behold a proof of Irish sense : 
Here Irish wit is seen : 
When nothing's left that's worth defence, 
They build a magazine ! " 

t Besides these famous books of Scott's and Johnson's, there is a copious " Life" 
by Thomas Sheridan (Dr. Johnson's " Sherry " ), father of Richard Brinsley, and 
on of that good-natured, clever Irish Dr. Thomas Sheridan. Swift's mtimate, who 
lost his chaplamcy by so unluckily choosing for a text on the King's birthday, '' Suffi- 
sient for the day is the evil thereof ! " Not to mention less important works, there is 
also the " Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift," by that polite 
and dignified writer, the Earl of Orrery. His lordship is said to have striven for 
literary renown, chiefly that he might make up for the slight passed on him by his 
father, who left his library away from him. It is to be feared that the ink he used 
to wa'-,h out that stain only made it look bigger. He had, however, known Swift, and 
corresponded with people who knew him. His work (which appeared in 1751) pro- 
voked a good deal of controversy, calling out, among other brochures, the mteresting 
" Observations on Lord Orrery's Remarks," &c., of Dr. Delany, 



374 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



Dr. Wilde of Dublin,* who has written a most interesting vol- 
ume on the closing years of Swift's life, calls Johnson "the 
most malignant of his biographers: " it is not easy for an Eng- 
lish critic to please Irishmen — perhaps to try and please them. 
And yet Johnson truly admires Swift : Johnson does not quar- 
rel with Swift's change of politics, or doubt his sincerity of 
religion : about the famous Stella and Vanessa controversy the 
Doctor does not bear very hardly on Swift. But he could not 
give the Dean that honest hand of his ; the stout old man puts 
it into his breast, and moves off from him.f 

Would we have liked to live with him t That is a question 
which, in dealing with these people's works, and thinking of 
their lives and peculiarities, every reader of biographies must 
put to himself. Would you have liked to be a friend of the 
great Dean ? I should like to have been Shakspeare's shoe- 
black — just to have lived in his house, just to have worshipped 
him — to have run on his errands, and seen that sweet serene 
face. I should like, as a young man, to have lived on Field- 
ing's staircase in tJie Temple, and after helping him up to bed 
perhaps, and opening his door with his latch-key, to have 
shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard him talk and 
crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who 
would not give something to pass a night at the club with John- 
son, and Goldsmith, and James Bosvvell, Esq., of Auchinleck ? 
The charm of Addison's companionship and conversation has 
passed to us by fond tradition — but Swift ? If you had been 
his inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect for all per- 
sons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in mere social 
station, he would have bullied, scorned and insulted you ; if, 
undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a 
man, he would have quailed before you,| and not had the pluck 

* Dr. Wilde's book was written on the occasion of the remains of Swift and Stella 
being brought to the light of day — a thing which happened in 1835, when certain 
works going on in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, afforded an opportunity of their 
being examined. One hears with surprise of these skulls " going the rounds " of 
houses, and being made the objects of dilettante cariosity. The larynx of Swift was 
actually carried off ! Phrenologists had a low opinion of his intellect from the ob- 
servations they took. 

Dr. Wilde traces the symptoms of ill-health in Swift, as detailed in his writings 
from time to time. He oljserves, likewise, that the skull gave evidence of "diseased 
action '' of the brain durmg life — such as would be produced by an increasing tendency 
to " cerebral congestion." 

t " He [Dr. Johnson] seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice against 
Swift; for 1 once took the liberty to ask him if Swift had personally offended him, 
and he told me he had not." — Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides. 

\ Few men, to be sure, dared this experiment, but yet their success was encourag- 
in?. One gentleman made a point of asking the Dean whether his uncle Godwin 
bad not given him his education. Swift, who hated that subject cordially, and, in- 



SWIFT. 375 

to reply, and gone home, and years after written a foul epigram 
about you — watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail 
you with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon. If you had 
been a lord with a blue ribbon, who flattered his vanity, or 
could help his ambition, he would have been the most delight- 
ful company in the world. He would have been so manly, so 
sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original, that you might think he 
had no object in view but the indulgence of his humor, and 
that he was the most reckless, simple creature in the world. 
How he would have torn your enemies to pieces for you ! and 
made fun of the Opposition ! His servility was so boisterous 
that it looked like independence ; * he would have done your 
errands, but with the air of patronizing you, and after fighting 
your battles, masked, in the street or the press, would have 
kept on his hat before your wife and daughters in the drawing- 
room, content to take that sort of pay for his tremendous ser- 
vices as a bravo. t 

deed, cared little for his kindred, said, sternly, " Yes ; he gave me the education of a 
dog.'' " Then, sir," cried the other, striking his fist on the table, " you have not the 
gratitude of a dog ! '' 

Other occasions there vvere when a bold face gave the Dean pause, even after his 
Irish almost-royal position was established. But he brought himself into greater 
danger on a certain occasion, and the amusing circumstances may be once more re- 
peated here. He had unsparingly lashed the notable Dublin lawyer, Mr. Serjeant 
Bettesworth — 

" Thus at the bar, the booby Bettesworth, 

Though half-a-crown o'er-pays his sweat's worth, 
Who knows in law nor text nor margent, 
Calls Singleton his brother-serjeant 1 " 

The Serjeant, it is said, swore to have his life. He presented himself at the 
deanery. The Dean asked his name. " Sir, I am Serjeant Bett-es-worth.'' 

" hi what regiment, pray -* '* asked Swift. 

A guard of volunteers formed themselves to defend the Dean at this time. 

* " But, my Hamilton, I will never hide the freedom of my sentiments from you. 
I am much inclined to believe that the temper of my friend Swift might occasion his 
Englisli friends to wish him happily and properly promoted av. a d . *-cn^„. His spirit, 
for I would give it the softest name, was evcruntractable. The motions of his genius 
were often irregular. He assumed more the air of a patron than of a friend. He 
affected rather to dictate than advise." — Orrery. 

I <i * * * «- ^n anecdote, which, though only told by Mrs. Pilkington, is well at- 
tested, bears, that the last time he was in London lie went to dine with the Earl of 
Burlington, who was but newly married. The Earl, it is supposed, being willing to 
have a little diversion, did not introduce him to his lady nor mention his name. 
After dinner said the Dean, ' Lady Burlington, I hear you can sing ; sing me a song.' 
The lady looked on this unceremonious manner of asking a favor with distaste, and 
positively refused. He said, ' She should sing, or he would make her. Why, madam, 
I suppose you take me for one of your poor English hedge-parsons ; sing when I bid 
you.' As the Earl did nothing but laugh at this freedom, the lady was so vexed that 
she burst into tears and retired. His first compliment to her when he saw her again 
was, ' Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you last ? ' 
To which she answered with great good-humor, ' No, Mr. Dean ; I'll sing for you if 



jy6 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

He says as much himself in one of his letters to Boling- 
broke : — " All my efforts to distinguish myself were only for 
want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a 
lord by those who have an opinion of my parts ; whether right 
or wrong is no great matter. And so the reputation of wit and 
great learning does the office of a blue ribbon or a coach and 
six. * 

Could there be a greater candor ? It is an outlaw, who says, 
" These are my brains ; with these I'll win titles and compete 
with fortune. These are my bullets ; these I'll turn into gold ;" 
and he hears the sound of coaches and six, takes the road like 
Macheath, and makes society stand and deliver. They are all 
on their knees before him. Down go my lord bishop's apron, 
and his Grace's blue ribbon, and my lady's brocade petticoat in 
the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent 
place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and gives 
them over to followers of his own. The great prize has not come 
yet. The coach with the mitre and crozier in it, which he in- 
tends to have for his share, has been delayed on the way from 
St. James's ; and he waits and waits until nightfall, when his 
runners come and tell Inm that the coach has taken a differ- 
ent road, and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air 
with a curse, and rides away into his own country.! 

you please.' From which time he conceived a great esteem for her.'' — Scott's Life. 
ii» * * * He had not the least tincture of vanity in liis conversation. He was, 
perhaps, as he said himself, too proud to be vain. Wlien he was polite, it was in a 
manner entirely his own. In his friendships he was constant and undisguised. He 
was the same in his enmities." — Orrery. 

* " I make no figure but at court, where I affect to turn from a lord to the meanest 
of my acquaintances." — Journal io Stella. 

" I am ph2;ued with bad authors, verse and prose, who send me their books and 
poems, the vilest I ever saw; but I have given their names to my man, never to let 
them see me." — Journal io Stella. 

The followin'; curious paragraph illustrates the life of a courtier : — 

" Did I ever tell you that the Lord Treasurer hears ill with the left ear, just as I 
<jo p * » * * I dare not tell him that I am so, for fear he should think that 1 
tfiunterfeited to make my eourt .' "—Journal io Stella. 

+ The war of pamphlets was carried on fiercely on one side and the other: 
and tlie Whig attacks made the Ministry Swift served very sore. Bolingbroke laid 
hold of several of the Opposition pamphleteers, and bewails their " factitiousness '' 
in the following letter : — 

" BOLINGEROKE TO THE EARL OF StRAFFORD. 

" ^Vhitehall, July2T,d, 1712. 
" It is a melancholy consideration that the laws of our country are too weak to 
punish effectually those factitious scribblers, who presume to blacken the brightest 
characters, and to give even scurrilous language to those who are in the first degrees 
of honor. This, rny lord, among others, is a symptom of the decayed condition of 
our Government, and serves to show how fatally v/e mistake licentiousness for lib* 
crty. All I could do was to take up Hart, the printer, to send him to Newgate, and 



SWIFT. 



zn 



Swift's seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral 
or adorn a tale of ambition, as any hero's that ever lived and 
failed. But we must remember that the morality was lax — that 
other gentlemen besides himself took the road in his day — that 
public society was in a strange disordered condition, and the 
State was ravaged by other condottieri. The Boyne was being 
fought and won, and lost — the bells rung in William's victory 
in the very same tone with which they would have pealed for 
James's. Men were loose upon politics, and had to shift for 

to bind liim over upon bail to bs prosecuted ; this I have done ; and if I can arrive at 
legal proof against the author, Ridpath, he shall liave the same treatment.'' 

Swift was not behind his ijlustrioas friend in tliis virtuous indignation. In the 
history of the four last years of tlic Queen, the Dean speaks in the most edifying 
mannir of the licentiousness of the press and the abusive language of the other 
party : — 

"It must be acknowledged that the bad practices of printers have been such as to 
deserve the severest animadversion from the public. * * * * The adverse party, 
full of rage and leisure since tlieir fall, and unanimous in their cause, employ a set of 
writers by subscription, who are well versed in all the topics of defamation, and have 
a style and genius levelled to the generality of their readers. * * * * However, 
the mischiefs of the press were too exorbitant to be cured by such a remedy as a tax 
upon small papers, and a bill for a mucli more effectual regulation of it was brought 
into tlie House of Commons, but so late in tlie session that there was no time to pass 
it, for there always appeared an unwilhngness to cramp overmuch the liberty of the 
press." 

But to a clause in the proposed bill, that the names of authors should be set to 
every printed book, pamphlet or paper, his Reverence objects altogether ; for, says 
he, "besides tlie objection to tliis clause from tlie practice of pious men, who, in pub- 
lishing excellent writings for the service of religion, have chosen, out of an humble 
Chris:ian spirit, to conceal their names, it is certain that all persons of true genius 
or knowledge have an invincible modesty and suspicion of themselves upon first send- 
ing their thoughts into the world." 

Tliis "invincible modesty" was no doubt the sole reason which induced the 
Dean to keep the secret of the " Drapier's Letters'' and a hundred humble Christian 
works of which he was the author. As for the Opposition, the Doctor was for 
dealing severely with them : he writes to Stella : 

Journal. Letter XIX. 

^'■London, March 2Sith, 1710-11. 

" * * * * We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing him 
pickled in a trough this fortnight for twopence a piece ; and the fellow that showed 
would point to his body and say, ' See, gentlemen, this is the wound that was given 
him by his Grace the Duke of Ormoiid;' and, ' This is the wound,' &c. ; and then 
the show was over, and another set of rabble came in. 'Tis hard that our laws 
would not suffer us to hang his body in chains, because he was not tried ; and in 
the eye of the law every man is innocent till then. « * * * " 

Journal. Letter XXVII. 

" London, ytily 25th, ijii. 

" I was this afternoon with Mr. Secretary at his office, and helped to hinder 3 
man of his pardon, who is condemned for a rape. The under Secretary was willing 
to save him ; but I told the Secretary he could not pardon him without a favorable 
report from the Judge ; besides, he was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue, and 
deserved hanging for something else, and so he shall swing." 



3^8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

themselves. They, as well as old beliefs and institutions, had 
lost their moorings and gone adrift in the storm. As in the 
South Sea Bubble, almost everybody gambled ; as in the Rail- 
way mania — not many centuries ago — almost every one took 
his unlucky share : a man of that time, of the vast talents 
and ambition of Swift, could scarce do otherwise than grasp at 
his prize, and make his spring at his opportunity. His bitter- 
ness, his scorn, his rage, his subsequent misanthropy, are as- 
cribed by some panegyrists to a deliberate conviction of man- 
kind's unworthiness, and a desire to amend them by castigating. 
His youth was bitter, as that of a great genius bound down by 
ignoble ties, and powerless in a mean dependence ; his age was 
bitter,* like that of a great genius that had fought the battle 
and nearly won it, and lost it, and thought of it afterwards 
writhing in a lonely exile. A man may attribute to the gods, 
if he likes, what is caused by his own fury, or disappointment, 
or self-will. What public man — what statesman projecting a 
coup — what king determined on an invasion of his neighbor — 
what satirist meditating an onslaught on society or an individ- 
ual, can't give a pretext for his move ? There was a French 
general the other day who proposed to march into this country 
and put it to sack and pillage, in revenge for humanity out- 
raged by our conduct at Copenhagen : there is always some 
excuse for men of the aggressive turn. They are of their na- 
ture warlike, predatory, eager for fight, plunder, dominion.! 

As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck — as strong awing 
as ever beat, belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate 
wrested the prey out of his claws, and cut his wings and 
chained him. One can gaze, and not without awe and pity, at 
the lonely eagle chained behind the bars. 

That Swift was born at No. 7 Hoey's Court, Dublin, on 
the 30th November, 1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody 
will deny the sister island the honor and glory ; but, it seems 
to me, he was no more an Irishman than a man born of Eng- 
lish parents at. Calcutta is a Hindoo.^ Goldsmith was an 

* It was his constant practice to keep his birthday as a day of mournins;. 

t " These devils of Grub Street rogues, that write the Flying Post and Medley 
in one paper, will not be quiet. They are always mauling Lord Treasurer, Lord 
Bolingbroke, and me. We have the dog under prosecution, but Bolingbroke is not 
active enough ; but I hope to swing jiim. He is a Scotch rogue, one Ridpath. 
They get out upon bail, and write on. We take them again, and get fresh bail ; so 
it goes round." — Journal to Stella. 

\ Swift was by no means inclined to forget such considerations ; and his English 
birth makes its mark, strikingly enougli, every now and then in his writings. Thus 
in a letter to Pope (Scott's Swift, vol. xix. p. 07), he says : — 

" We have had your volume of letters. « « » « Some of those who highly 



SWIFT, 379 

Irishman, and always an Irishman : Steele was an Irishman, 
and alv/ays an Irishman : Swift's heart was English and in 
England, his habits English, his logic eminently Englisli ; his 
statement is elaborately simple ; he shuns tropes and meta- 
phors, and uses his ideas and words with a wise thrift and 
economy, as he used his money : with which he could be gen- 
erous and splendid upon great occasions, but which he hus- 
banded when there was no need to spend it. He never 
indulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, 
profuse imagery. He lays his opinion before you with a grave 
simplicity and a perfect neatness.* Dreading ridicule too, as 
a man of his humor — above all an Englishman of his humor — 
certainly would, he is afraid to use the poetical power which he 
really possessed ; one often fancies in reading him that he 
dares not be eloquent when he might ; that he does not speak 
above his voice, as it were, and the tone of society. 

value yon, and few who knew you personally, are grieved to find you make no dis- 
tinction between tlie English gentry of this kingdom, and the savage old Irish (who 
ar3 only the vulgar, and some gentlemen wlio live in the Irish parts of tlie kingdom); 
but the Engllbhcolonies, who are three parts in four, are much more civilized than 
many counties in England, and speak better English, and are much better bred." 

And again, in the fourth Drapier's Letter, wc have the following : — 

" A short paper, printed at IJristol, and reprinted here, reports Mr. Wood to say 
'that he wonders at the impudence 'and insolence of the Irish in refusing his coin.' 
When, by the way, it is the true English people of Ireland who refuse it, although 
we take it for granted that the Irish will do so too whenever they are asked." — 
Scott's Szvlff, vol. vi. p. 453. 

He goes further, in a good-humored satirical paper, " On Barbarous Denomina- 
tions in Ireland," where (after abusing, as he was wont, the Scotch cadence, as well 
as expression,) he advances to the ^'' Irish brogue," zud speaking of the "censure" 
which it brings down, says : — 

" And what is yet worse, it is too well known that the bad consequence of this 
opinion affects those among us who are not the least liable to such reproaches farther 
than the misfortune of being born in Ireland, although of English parents, and whose 
education has been chiefly in that kingdom." — Ibid. vol. vii. p. 149. 

But, indeed, if we are to make anything oi Race at all, we must call that man an 
Englishman whose father comes from an old Yorkshire family, and his mother from 
an old Leicestershire one ! 

* " The style of his conversation was very much of a piece with that of his 
writings, concise and clear and strong. Being one day at a Sheriff's feast, who 
amongst other toasts called out to him, 'Mr. Dean, The Trade of Ireland!' he 
answered quickly : ' Sir, I drink no memories !'**»* 

" Happening to be in company with a petulant young man who prided himself on 
saying pert things * * * and who cried out—' You must know, Mr. Dean, that I set 
up for a wit ? ' "' Do you so ? ' says the Dean. ' Take my advice, and sit down 
again ! ' 

" At another time, being in company, where a lady whisking her long train [long 
trains \ ere then in fashion] swept down a fine fiddle and broke it ; Swift cried 
out — 

' Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae 1' '' 

— Dr. Dklany : Observations uJ>on Lord Orrery's "Remarks, &'(., on Swift." 
London, 1754. 



jSo ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his 
knowledge of polite life, his acquaintance with literature even, 
which he could not have pursued very sedulously during that 
reckless career at Dublin, Swift got under the roof of Sir 
William Temple. He was fond of telling in after life what 
quantities of books he devoured there, and how King William 
taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion. It was at 
Shene and at Moor Park, with a salary of twenty pounds and 
a dinner at the upper servants' table, that this great and lonely 
Swift passed a ten years' apprenticeship — wore a cassock that 
was only not a livery — bent down a knee as proud as Lucifer's 
to supplicate my lady's good graces, or run on his honor's 
errands.* It was here, as he was wricing at Temple's table, or 
following his patron's walk, that he saw and heard the men who 
had governed the great world — measured himself with them, 
looking up from his silent corner, gauged their brains, weighed 
their wits, turned them, and tried them, and marked them. 
Ah ! what platitudes he must have heard ! what feeble jokes ! 
what pompous commonplaces ! what small men they must have 
seemed under those enormous periwigs, to the swarthy, un- 
couth, silent Irish secretary. I wonder whether it ever struck 
Temple, that that Irishman was his master .-• I suppose that 
dismal conviction did not present itself under the ambrosial 
wig, or Temple could never have lived with Swift. Swift 
sickened, rebelled, left the service — ate humble pie and came 
back again ; and so for ten years went on, gathering learning, 
swallowing scorn, and submitting with a stealthy rage to his 
fortune. 

Temple's style is the perfection of practised and easy good- 
breeding. If he does not penetrate very deeply into a subject, 
he professes a very gentlemanly acquaintance with it ; if he 
makes rather a parade of Latin, it was the custom of his day, 
as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelope his head in a 
periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles, and 
square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, 
and you never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any 
lady's train or any rival's heels in the Court crowd. When 
that grows too hot or too agitated for him, he politely leaves it. 
He retires to his retreat of Shene or Moor Park ; and lets the 
King's party and the Prince of Orange's party battle it out 

* " Don't you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir WilHam Temple 
would look cold and out of humor for three or four days, and I used to suspect a 
hundred reasons ? 1 have plucked up my spirits since then, faith : he spoiled a fino 
gentleman.'' — Jourtial to Stella. 



SWIFT. 381 

among themselves. He reveres the Sovereign (and no man 
perhaps ever testified to his loyalty by so elegant a bow) j he 
admires the Prince of Orange ; but there is one person whose 
ease and comfort he loves more than all the princes in Chris- 
tendom, and that valuable member of society is himself Guliel- 
mus Temple, Baronettus. One sees him in his retreat ; be- 
tween his study-chair and his tulip-beds,* clipping his apricots 
and pruning his essays, — the statesman, the ambassador no 
more ; but the philosopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman 
and courtier at St. James's as at Shene ; where in place of kings 
and fair ladies he pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty ; or 
walks a minuet with the Epic Muse ; or dallies by the south 
wall with the ruddy nymph of gardens. 

Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious 
deal of veneration from his household, and to have been 
coaxed, and warmed, and cuddled by the people round about 
him, as delicately as any of the plants which he loved. When 
he fell ill in 1693, the household was aghast at his indisposition ; 
mild Dorothea his wife, the best companion of the best of men — 

" Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great, 
Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate.'' 

*"**** The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and fortu- 
nate in their expression, when they placed a man's happiness in the tranquillity of 
his mind and indolence of body ; for while we are composed of both, I doubt both 
must have a share in the good or ill we feel. As men of several languages say the 
same things in very different words, so in several ages, countiies, constitutions of 
laws and religion, the same thing seems to be meant by very different expressions: 
what is called by the Stoics apathy, or dispassion ; by the skeptics, indisturbance ; 
by the Molinists, quietism ; by common, men, peace of conscience, — seems all to 
m-an but great tranquillity of mind. * * * For this reason, Epicurus passed his 
life wholly in his garden ; there he studied, there he exetcised, there he taught his 
philosophy ; and, indeed, no other sort of abode seems to contribute so much to both 
tiie tranquillity of mind and indolence of body, which he made his chief ends. The 
sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness 
and lightness of food, the exercise of working or walking ; but, above all, the exemp- 
tion from cares and solicitude, seem equally to favor and improve both contemplation 
and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and ^hereby the quiet and ease 
both of the body and mind.* * * Where Paradise was, has been much debated, and 
little agreed ; but what sort of place meant by it may perhaps easier be conjectured. 
It seems to have been a Persian word, since Xenophon and other Greek authors 
mention it as what was much in use and delight among the kings of those eastern 
countries. Strabo describing Jericho : ' Ibi est palmetum, cui immixtae sunt etiam 
aliae stirpes hortenses, locus ferax palmis abundans, f patio stadiorum centum, totus 
irrigus : ibi est Regis Balsami paradisus.'' '' — Essay o?i Gardens. 

In the same famous essay Temple speaks of a friend, whose conduct and prudence 
he characteristically admires : 

" * * * * J thought it very prudent in a gentleman of my friends in Stafford- 
shire, who is a .great lover of his gardens, to pretend no higher, though his soil be 
good enough, than to the perfection of plums ; and in these (by bestowing south 
walls upon them) he has very well succeeded, which he could never have done in 
attempts upon peaches and grapes ; and a good plum is certaiuly better than an ill 
peach." 



3S2 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

As for Dorinda, his sister, — 

" Those who would grief describe, might come and trace 

Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face. 

To S2e her weep, joy every face forsook. 

And grief flung sables on each menial look. 

The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, 

That furnished spirit and motion through the whole." 

Isn't that line in which grief is described as putting the menials 
into a mourning livery, a fine image.'' One of the menials 
wrote it who did not like that Temple livery nor those twenty- 
pound wages. Cannot one fancy the uncouth young servitor, 
with downcast ej'es, books and papers in hand, following at his 
honor's heels in the garden walk ; or taking his honor's orders 
as he stands by the great chair, where Sir William has the 
gout, and his feet all blistered with moxa ? When Sir William 
has the gout or scolds it must be hard work at the second- 
table;* the Irish secretary owned as much afterwards: and 
when he came to dinner, how he must have lashed and growled 
and torn the household with his gibes and scorn ! What would 
the steward say about the pride of them Irish schollards — and 
this one had got no great credit even at his Irish college, if 
the truth were known — and what a contempt his Excellency's 

* Swift's Thoughts on Hanging. 

{Directions to Servants.) 

" To grow old in the office of a footman is the highest of all indignities ; therefore, 
when you find years coming on without hopes of a place at court, a command in the 
army, a succession to the stewardship, an employment in the revenue (which two last 
you cannot obtain without reading and writing), or running away with your master's 
niece or daughter, 1 directly advise you to go upon the road, which is the only post of 
honor left you ; there you will meet many of your old comrades, and live a short life 
and a merry one, and make a figure at your exit, wherein I will give you some in- 
structions. 

" The last advice I give you relates to your behavior when you are going to be 
hanged : which, either for robbing 5'our master, for housebreaking, or going upon the 
highway, or in a drunken quarrel by killing the first man you meet, may very probably 
be your lot, and is owing to one of these three qualities : either a love of good fellow- 
ship, a generosity of mind, or too much vivacity of spirits. Your good behavior on 
this article will concern your whole community: deny the fact with all solemnity of 
imprecations : a hundred of your brethren, if they can be admitted, will attend about 
the bar, and be ready upon demand to give you a character before the Court ; let noth- 
ing prevail on you to confess, but th; promise of a pardon for discovering your com- 
rades ; but I suppose all this to be in vain ; for if you escape now, your fate will be 
the same another day. Get a speech to be written by the best author of Newgate ; 
some of your kind wenches will provide you with a holland shirt and white cap, 
crowned with a crimson or black ribbon : take leave cheerfully of all your friends in 
Newgate : mount the cart with courage ; fall on your knees ; lift up your eyes ; hold 
a book in your hands, although you cannot read a word ; deny the fact at the gallows ! 
kiss and forgive the hangman, and so farewell ; you shall be buried in pomp at the 
charge of the fraternity : the surgeon shall not touch a limb of you ; and your fama 
shall continue until a successor of equal renovra succeeds in your place. * * • '' 



SWIFT. 



383 



own gentleman must have had for Parson Teague from Dublin. 
(The valets and chaplains were always at' war. It is hard to 
say which Swift thought the more contemptible). And what 
must have been the sadness, the sadness and terror, of the 
housekeeper's little daughter with the curling black ringlets 
and the sweet smiling face, when the secretary who teaches 
her to read and write, and whom she loves and reverences 
above all things — above mother, above mild Dorofliea, above 
that tremendous Sir William in his square-toes and periwig, — 
when Mr. Sivi/i comes down from his master with rage in his 
heart, and has not a kind word even for little Hester Johnson? 

Perhaps, for the Irish secretary, his Excellency's condescen- 
sion was even more cruel than his frowns. Sir William would 
perpetually quote Latin and the ancient classics d propos of his 
gardens and his Dutch statues 2lX\<\ plates-bandes, and talk about 
Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius, Julius Caesar, Semiramis, and 
the gardens of the Hesperides, McEcenas, Strabo describing 
Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. Apropos of beans, he would 
mention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans, and that 
this precept probably meant that wise men should abstain from 
public affairs. He is a placid Epicurean ; he is a Pythagorean 
philosopher ; he is a wise man — that is the deduction. Does 
not Swift think so ? One can imagine the downcast eyes lifted 
up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which they emit. 
Swift's eyes were as azure as the heavens ; Pope says nobly (as 
everything Pope said and thought of his friend was good and 
noble), " His eyes are as azure as the heavens, and have a 
charming archness in them." And one person in that house- 
hold, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor Park, saw heaven no- 
where else. 

But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree 
with Swift. He was half-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins; 
and in a garden-seat which he devised for himself at Moor 
Park, and where he devoured greedily the stock of books 
within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness which pun- 
ished and tormented Jiim through life. He could not bear the 
place or the servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condo- 
lence, from which we have quoted a few lines of mock melan- 
choly, he breaks out of the funereal procession with a mad 
shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying his own grief, cursing 
his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by fortune, 
and even hope. 

I don't know anything more melancholy than the letter to 
Temple, in which, after having broke from his bondage, the poor 



384 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

wretch crouches piteously towards his cage again, and deprecates 
his master's anger. He asks for testimonials for orders. " The 
particulars required of me are what relate to morals and learn- 
ing ; and the reasons of quitting your honor's family — that is, 
whether the last was occasioned by any ill action. They are 
left entirely to your honor's mercy, though in the first I think 1 
cannot reproach myself for anything further than for infirmities. 
This is alt I dare at present beg from your honor, under cir- 
cumstances of life not worth your regard : what is left me to 
wish (next to the health and prosperity of your honor and 
family) is that Heaven would one day allow me the opportu- 
nity of leaving my acknowledgments at your feet. I beg my 
most humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your 
honor's lady and sister." — Can prostration fall deeper ? could 
a slave bow lower ? * 

Twenty years afterwards Bishop Ken net, describing the 
same man, says, " Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and 
had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the ante- 
chamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the 
principal man of talk and business. He was soliciting the 
Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, 
to get a place for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold 
to undertake, with my Lord Treasurer, that he should obtain a 
salary of 200/. per annum as member of the English Church 
at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going into the 

* " He continued in Sir William Temple's house till the death of that great man." 
— Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, )yj tlie Dean. 

" It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to himself." — Pre- 
face to Templets Works. 

On all public occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same tone. But the 
reader will better understand how acutely he remembered the indignities he suffered 
in his household, from the subjoined extracts from \.\\t Journal to Stella: — 

"I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d ailed him on Sun- 
day : I made him a very proper speech ; told him I observed he was much out of 
temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the cause, but would be glad to sec he 
was in better ; and one thing I warned him of — never to appear cold to me, for I would 
not b3 treated like a schoolboy ; that I had felt too much of that in my life already '' 
{mea ling Sir William Temple), &c., &c. — Journal to Stella. 

'■ I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple be- 
cause he might have been Secretary of State at fifty ; and here is a young fellow hardly 
thirty in that employment."— /Z-Zif. 

" The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often thought 
what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary of State." — Ibid. 

" Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite well. I 
was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family the other night. He gave us 
all twelvepence apiece to begin with; it put me in mind of Sir William Temple." 
—Ibid. 

" I thought I saw Jack Temple {nephew to Sir William] and his wife pass by 
me to-day in their coach ; but I took no notice of them. I am glad I have wholly 
shaken off that family."— 5. to S. Sept., 1710. 



SWIFT. 385 

Queen with the red bag, and told him aloud, he had something 
to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He took out his gold 
watch, and telling the time of day, complained that it was very 
late. A gentleman said he was too fast. ' How can I help it,' 
says the Doctor, ' if the courtiers give me a watch that won't 
go right ? ' Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the 
best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun 
a translation of Homer into English, for which he would have 
them all subscribe : 'For,' says he, 'he shall not begin to print 
till I have a thousand guineas for him.' * Lord Treasurer, 
after leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning 
Dr. Swift to follow him, — both went off just before prayers." 
There's a little malice in the Bishop's "just before prayers." 

This picture of the great Dean seems a true once, and is 
harsh, though not altogether unpleasant. He was doing good, 
and to deserving men too, in the midst of these intrigues and 
triumphs. His journals and a thousand anecdotes of him relate 
his kind acts and rough manners. His hand was constantly 
stretched out to relieve an honest man — he was cautious about 
his money, but ready. — If you were in a strait would you like , 
such a benefactor.? I think I would rather have had a potato 
and a friendly word from Goldsmith than have been beholden 
to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner. t He insulted a man as 
he served him, made women cry, guests look foolish, bullied 
unlucky friends, and flung his benefactions into poor men's 
faces. No ; the Dean was no Irishman — no Irish ever gave 
but with a kind word and a kind heart. 

* "Swift must be allowed," says Dr. Johnson, " for a time, to have dictated the 
political opinions of the English nation.'' 

A conversation on the Dean's pamphlets excited one of the Doctor's liveliest 
sallies. " One, in particular, praised his 'Conduct of the Allies.' — Johnson: 'Sir, 
his ' Conduct of the Allies ' is a performance of very little ability. * * * Why, sir, 
Tom Davies might have written the ' Conduct of the AlHes ! ' " — Boswell's Life of 
Johison. 

t " Whenever he fell into the company of any person for the first time, it was his 
custom to try their tempers and disposition by some abrupt question that bore the 
appearance of rudeness. If this were well taken, and answered with good humor, he 
afterwards made amends by his civilities. But if he saw any marks of resentment, 
from alarmed pride, vanity, or conceit, he dropped all further intercourse with the 
party. This will be illustrated by an anecdote of that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. 
After supper, the Dean having decanted a bottle of wine, poured what remained into 
a glass, and seeing it was muddy, presented it to Mr. Pilkington to drink it. ' For,' 
said he, ' 1 always keep some poor parson to drink the foid wine for me.' Mr. Pilk- 
ington, entering into his humor, thanked him, and told him ' he did not know the 
difference, but was glad *-o get a glass at any rate.' ' Why, then,' said the Dean, 'you 

shan't, for I'll drink it myself. Why, take you, you are wiser than a paltry curate 

whom I asked to dine with me a few days ago ; for upon my making the same speech 
to him, he said he did not understand such usage, and so walked off without his din- 
ner. By the same token, I told the gentleman who recommended him to me that the 
fellow was a blockhead, and 1 had done with him.' " — Sheridan's Life of Swift. 

25 



386 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

It is told, as if it were to Swift's credit, that the Dean of 
St. Patrick's performed his family devotions every morning reg- 
ularly, but with such secrecy that the guests in his house were 
never in the least aware of the ceremony. There was no need 
surely why a church dignitary should assemble his family priv- 
ily in a crypt, and as if he was afraid of heathen persecution. 
But I think the world was right, and the Bishops who advised 
Queen Anne, when they counselled her not to appoint the author 
of the "Tale of a Tub" to a bishopric, gave perfectly good ad- 
vice. The man who wrote the arguments and illustrations in 
that wild book, could not but be aware what must be the sequel 
of the propositions which he laid down. The boon companion 
of Pope and Bolingbroke, who chose these as the friends of his 
life, and the recipients of his confidence and affection, must 
have heard many an argument, and joined in many a conversa- 
tion over Pope's port, or St. John's Burgundy, which would not 
bear to be repeated at other men's boards. 

I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of 
Swift's religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn cler- 
gyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author 
of the " Beggar's Opera " — Gay, the wildest of the wits about 
town — it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take 
orders — to invest in a cassock and bands — just as he advised 
him to husband his shillings and put his thousand pounds out 
at interest.* The Queen, and the bishops, and the world, were 
right in mistrusting the religion of that man. 

* From The Archbishop of Cashell. 

« Dear Sir,- " ^''''''^^^ ^"y ^i^, i73S- 

" I HAVE been so unfortunate in all my contests of late, that I am resolved to 
have no more, especially where I am likely to be overmatched ; and as I have some 
reason to hope what is past will be forgotten, I confess I did endeavor in my last to 
put the best color I could think of upon a very bad cause. My friends judge right 
of my idleness ; but, in reality, it has iiitherto proceeded from a hurry and confusion, 
arising from a thousand unlucky unforeseen accidents rather than mere sloth. I have 
but one troublesome affair now upon my hands, which, by the help of the prime Ser- 
jeant, I hope soon to get rid of ; and then you shall sec me a true Irish bishop. Sir 
James Ware has nia le a very useful collection of the memorable actions of my prede- 
cessors. He tells me, they were born in such a town of England or Ireland ; were 
consecrated such a year ; and if not translated, were buried in the Cathedral church, 
either on the north or south side. Whence I conclude, that a good bishop has noth- 
ing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die ; which laudable example I 
propose for the remainder of my liife to follow; for to tell you the truth, I have for 
these four or five years past met with so much treachery, baseness, and ingratitude 
among mankind, that I can hardly think it incumbent on any man to endeavor to do 
good to so perverse a generation. 

" I am truly concerned at the account you gave me of your health. Without 
doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can take to recover your 
flesh ; and I do not know, except in one stage, where you can choose a road so suited 



SWIFT. 387 

I am not here, of course, to speak of any man's religious views, 
except in so far as they influence his literary character, his life, 
his humor. The most notorious sinners of all those fellow- 
mortals whom it is our business to discuss — Harry Fielding and 
Dick Steele, were especially loud, and I believe really fervent, 
in their expressions of belief ; they belabored freethinkers, 
and stoned imaginary atheists on all sorts of occasions, going 
out of their way to bawl their own creed, and persecute their 
neighbor's, and if they sinned and stumbled, as they constantly 
did with debt, with drink, with all sorts of bad behavior, they 
got upon their knees and cried " Peccavi " with a most sonor- 
ous orthodoxy. Yes ; poor Harry Fielding and poor Dick 
Steele were trusty and undoubting Church of England men ; 
they abhorred Popery, Atheism, and wooden shoes, and idola- 
tries in general ; and hiccough Church and State with fervor. 

But Swift? His mind had had a different schooling, and 
possessed a very different logical power. He was not bred up 
in a tipsy guard-room, and did not learn to reason in a Covent 
Garden tavern. He could conduct an argument from begin- 
ning to end. He could see forward with a fatal clearness. In 
his old age, looking at the " Tale of a Tub," when he said, 
" Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book ! " I 
think he was admiring not the genius, but the consequences to 
which the genius had brought him — a vast genius, a magnifi- 
cent genius, a genius wonderfully bright, and dazzling, and 
strong, — to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon falsehood and 
scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into the hidden motives, 
and expose the black thoughts of men, — an awful, an evil 
spirit. 

Ah man ! you, educated in Epicurean Temple's library, you 

to your circumstances, as from Dublin hitlier. You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and 
good inns, at every ten or twelve miles' end. From Kilkenny hither is twenty long 
miles, bad road, and no inns at all : but I have an expedient for you. At the foot of 
a very high hill, just midway, there lives in a neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is 
not poor ; his wife is allowed to be th^ best little woman in the world. Her chickens 
are the fattest, and her ale the best in all the country. Besides, the parson has a 
little cellar of his own, of wliich he keeps the key, where he always has a hogshead of 
the best wine that can be got, in bottles well corked, upon their side ; and he cleans, 
and pulls out the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with 
a coach ; if you be tired, you shall stay all night ; if not, after dinner, we will set out 
about four, and be at Cashell by nine ; and bv going through fields and by-ways, which 
the parson will show us, we shall escape all the rocky and stony roads that lie between 
this place and that, which are certainlv verv bad. I hope vou will be so kind as to 
let me know a post or two before you set out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, 
that ] may have all things prepared for you. It may be, if you ask him. Cope will 
come : he will do nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, 
1 shall add no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth, your 
most faithful and obedient servant, Theo. Cashell." 



388 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

whose friends were Pope and St. John — what made you to 
swear to fatal vows, and bind yourself to a life-long hypocrisy 
before the Heaven which you adored with such real wonder, 
humility, and reverence ? For Swift was a reverent, was a 
pious spirit — for Swift could love and could pray. Through 
the storms and tempests of his furious mind, the stars of re- 
ligion and love break out in the blue, shining serenely, though 
hidden by the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of 
his life. 

It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the con- 
sciousness of his own skepticism, and that he had bent his pride 
so far down as to put his apostasy out to hire.* The paper left 
behind him, called " Thoughts on Religion," is merely a set of 
excuses for not professing disbelief. He says of his sermons 
that he preached pamphlets : they have scarce a Christian char- 
acteristic ; they might be preached from the steps of a syna- 
gogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house 
almost. There is little or no cant — he is too great and too 
proud for that ; and, in so far as the badness of his sermons 
goes, he is honest. But having put that cassock on, it poisoned 
him : he was strangled in his bands. He goes through life, tear- 
ing, like a man possessed with a deviU Like Abudah in the 
Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows 
that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What 
a night, my God, it was ! what a lonely rage and long agony — 
what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant ! t It is awful to 
think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life 
he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can't 
fancy Shakspeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The 
kings can have no company. But this man suffered so ; and 
deserved so to suffer. One hardly reads anywhere of such a 
pain. 

The " saeva indignatio " of which he spoke as lacerating 
his heart, and which he dares to inscribe on his tombstone — as 
if the wretch who lay under that stone waiting God's judgment 
had a right to be angry — breaks out from him in a thousand 
pages of his writing, and tears and rends him. Against men 

* " Mr. Swift lived with him [Sir William Temple] some time, but resolving to 
settle himself in some way of livmg, was inclined to take orders. However, althouc;h 
his fortune was very small, he had a scruple of enterin:^ into the Church merely for 
support.''— .4«^c</o/« of the Family of Swift, by the Dean. 

t " Dr. Swift had a natural severity of face, which even his smiles could scarce 
soften, or his utmost gayety render placid and serene ; but when that sternness of 
visa:;e was increased by rage, it is scarce possible to imagine looks or features that 
carried in them more terror and austerity." — Orrery. 



SWIFT. 



389 



in office, he "having been overthrown ; against men in England, 
he having lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile 
never fails to rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous 
" Drapier's Letters " patriotism ? They are masterpieces of 
dreadful humor and invective : they are reasoned logically 
enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous 
as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so 
great, but there is his enemy — the assault is wonderful for its 
activity and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a bone in his 
hand, rushing on his enemies and felling them : one admires 
not the cause so much as the strength, the anger, the fury of 
the champion. As is the case with madmen, certain subjects 
provoke him, and awaken his fits of wrath. Marriage is one 
of these ; in a hundred passages in his writings he rages against 
it ; rages against children ; an object of constant satire, even 
more contemptible in his eyes than a lord's chaplain, is a poof 
curate with a large family. The idea of this luckless paternity 
never fails to bring down from him gibes and foul language. 
Could Dick Steele, or Goldsmith, or Fielding, in his most reck- 
less moment of satire, have written anything like the Dean's 
famous "modest proposal " for eating children ? Not one of 
these but melts at the thoughts of childhood, fondles and car- 
esses it. Mr. Dean has no such softness, and enters the nursery 
with the tread and gayety of an ogre.* " I have been assured," 
says he in the " Modest Proposal," "by a very knowing Amer- 
ican of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy 
child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, 
and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled ; 
and I make no doubt it will equally serve in a ragout^ And, 
taking up this pretty joke, as his way is, he argues it with per- 
fect gravity and logic. He turns and twists this subject in a 
score of different ways : he hashes it ; and he serves it up 
cold ; and he garnishes it ; and relishes it always. He describes 
the little animal as " dropped from its dam," advising that the 
mother should let it suck plentifully in the last month, so as to 
render it plump and fat for a good table ! " "A child," says 
his Reverence, " will make two dishes at an entertainment for 
friends ; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind 
quarter will make a reasonable dish," and so on ; and, the 

* " London, April lot/i, lyiT,. 

" Lady Masham's eldest boy is very ill : I doubt he will not live ; and she stays at 
Kensington to nurse him, which vexes us all. She is so excessively fond, it makes 
me mad. She should never leave the Queen, but leave everything, to stick to whatia 
so much the interest of the public, as well as her own. * * * * " — Journal. 



39° 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



subject being so delightful that he can't leave it, he proceeds 
to recommend, in place of venison for squires' tables, " the 
bodies of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or 
under twelve." Amiable humorist ! laughing castigator of 
morals ! There was a process well known and practised in 
the Dean's gay days : when a lout entered the coffee-house, 
the wags proceeded to what they called " roasting" him. This 
is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native 
genius for it. As the " Almanach des Gourmands " says, On 
nati rbtisscur. 

And it was not merely by the sarcastic method that Swist 
exposed the unreasonableness of loving and having children. 
In Gulliver, the folly of love and marriage is urged by graver 
arguments and advice. In the famous Lilliputian kingdom, 
Swift speaks with approval of the practice of instantly remov- 
ing children from their parents and educating them by the 
State ; and amongst his favorite horses, a pair of foals are 
stated to be the very utmost a well-regulated equine couple 
would permit themselves. In fact, our great satirist was of 
opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, and illustrated the 
theory by his own practice and example — God help him — which 
made him about the most wretched being in God's world.* 

The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition, as 
exemplified in the cannibal proposal just mentioned, is our 
author's constant method through all his works of humor. 
Given a country of people six inches or sixty feet high, and by 
the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities 
are evolved, at so many stages of the calculation. Turning to 
the first minister who waited behind him with a white staff 
•near as tall as the mainmast of the " Royal Sovereign," the 
King of Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human 
grandeur is, as represented by such a contemptible little crea- 
ture as Gulliver. "The Emperor of Lilliput's features are 
strong and masculine " (what a surprising humor there is in 
this description !) — " The Emperor's features," Gulliver says, 
" are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip, an arched 
nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body 
and limbs well proportioned, and his deportment majestic. He 
is taller by the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which 
alone is enough to strike an awe into beholders." 

What a surprising humor there is in these descriptions ! 
How noble the satire is here ! how just and honest ! How 

* " My health is somewhat mended, but at best I have an ill head and an aching 
heart." — In May, 1719. 



SWIFT. 



391 



perfect the image ! Mr. Macaulay has quoted the charming 
lines of the poet, where the king of the pygmies is measured 
by the same standard. We have all read in Milton of the 
spear that was like "the mast of some tall admiral," but these 
images are surely likely to come to the comic poet originally. 
The subject is before him. He is turning it in a thousand 
ways. He is full of it. The figure suggests itself naturally 
to him, and comes out of his subject, as in that wonderful pas- 
sage, when Gulliver's box having been dropped by the eagle 
into the sea, and Gulliver having been received into the ship's 
cabin, he calls upon the crew to bring the box into the cabin, 
and put it on the table, the cabin being only a quarter the 
size of the box. It is the veracity of the blunder which is so 
admirable. Had a man come from such a country as Brob- 
dingnag he would have blundered so. 

But the best stroke of humor, if there be a best in that 
abounding book, is that where Gulliver, in the unpronounceable 
country, describes his parting from his master the horse.* " I 

* Perhaps the most melancholy satire in the whole of the dreadful book, is the de- 
scription of the very old people in the " Voyage to Laputa." At Lugnag, Gulliver 
hears of some persons who never die, called the Struldbrugs, and expressing a wish 
to become acquainted with men wlio must have so much learning and experience, his 
colloquist describes the Struldbrugs to him. 

" He said : They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years old, after 
which, by degrees, they grow melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they 
came to fourscore. This he learned from their own profession : for otherwise there 
not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form 
a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the 
extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of 
other old men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dy- 
ing. They were not only opinionative. peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but 
incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below 
their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevaihng passions. But 
those objects against vv'hich their envy seems principally directed, are the vice^ of the 
younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find them- 
selves cut off from all possibility of pleasure ; and whenever they see a funeral, they 
lament, and repine that others are gone to a harbor of rest, to which they themselves 
never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they 
learned and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect. 
And for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition 
than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be 
those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more 
pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others. 

" If a Struldburg happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved 
of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to 
be fourscore. For the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence that those who are con- 
demned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should 
not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. 

" As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as 
dead in law ; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates, only a small pittance is 
reserved for their support ; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. 
After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit, they 



392 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



took," he says, " a second leave of my master, but as I was 
going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honor 
to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much 
I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. De- 
tractors are pleased to think it improbable that so illustrious a 
person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction 
to a creature so inferior as I. Neither have I forgotten how 
apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary favors they 
have received. But if these censurers were better acquainted 
with the noble and courteous disposition of the Houyhnhnms 
they would soon change their opinion." 

The surprise here, the audacity of circumstantial evidence, 
the astounding gravity of the speaker, who is not ignorant how 
much he has been censured, the nature of the favor conferred, 
and the respectful exultation at the receipt of it, are surely 
complete ; it is truth topsy-turvy, entirely logical and absurd. 

As for the humor and conduct of this famous fable, I sup- 
pose there is no person who reads but must admire ; as for the 

cannot purchase lands or take leases, neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any 
cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds. 

" At ninety they lose their teeth and hair ; they have at that age no distinction of 
taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get without rehsh or appetite. The dis- 
eases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, 
they forget the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of 
those who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they can 
never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry 
them from the beginning of a sentence to the end ; and by this defect they are de- 
prived c f the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable. 

" The language of this country being always upon the flux, the Struldbrugs of one 
age do not understand those of another ; neither are they able, after two hundred 
years, to hold any conversation (further tlian by a few general words) with their 
neighbors, the mortals ; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like for- 
eigners in their own country. 

" Tkis was the account given me of the Struldbrugs, as near as I can remember. 
I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred 
years old, who were brought to me at several times by some of my friends ; but al- 
though they were told ' that I was a great traveller, and had seen all the world,' they 
had not the least curiosity to ask me a question ; only desired I would give them 
slumskudask, or a token of remembrance ; which is a modest way of begging, to avoid 
the law, that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the public, although 
indeed with a very scanty allowance. 

" They are despised and hated by all sorts of people ; when one of them is born, it 
is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly ; so that you may 
know their age by consulting the register, which, however, has not been kept above a 
thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. 
But the usual way of computing how old they are, is by asking them what kings or 
great persons they can remember, and then consulting history ; for infallibly the last 
prince in their mind did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old. 

" They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women more horrible 
than the men ; besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, tley acquired an ad- 
ditional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be de- 
scribed; and among half a dozen, I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although 
there was not above a century or two between them." — Gtdliver's Travels, 



SWIFT. 



393 



moral, I think it liorrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous ; and 
giant and great as this Dean is, I say we should hoot him. 
Some of this audience mayn't have read the last part of Gulli- 
ver, and to such I would recall the advice of the venerable Mr. 
Punch to persons about to marry, and say " Don't." When 
Gulliver first lands among the Yahoos, the naked howling 
wretches clamber up trees and assault him, and he describes 
himself as " almost stifled with the filth which fell about him." 
The reader of the fourth part of " Gulliver's Travels " is like 
the hero himself in this instance. It is Yahoo language : a 
monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations against 
mankind — tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense of 
manliness and shame ; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, 
raging, obscene. 

And dreadful it is to think that Swift knew the tendency of 
his creed — the fatal rocks towards which his logic desperately 
drifted. That last part of " Gulliver " is only a consequence of 
what has gone before ; and the worthlessness of all mankind, 
the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecility, the general vanity, the 
foolish pretension, the mock greatness, the pompous dulness, 
the mean aims, the base successes — all these were present to 
him ; it was with the din of these curses of the world, blas- 
phemies against heaven, shrieking in his ears, that he began to 
write his dreadful allegory — of which the meaning is that man 
is utterly wicked, desperate, and imbecile, and his passions are 
so monstrous, and his boasted powers so mean, that he is and 
deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance is better than 
his vaunted reason. What had this man done? what secret 
remorse was rankling at his heart ? what fever was boiling in 
him, that he should see all the world bloodshot ? We view the 
world with our own eyes, each of us ; and we make from with- 
in us the world we see. A weary heart gets no gladness out of 
sunshine ; a selfish man is skeptical about friendship, as a man 
with no ear doesn't care for music. A frightful self-conscious- 
ness it must have been, which looked on mankind so darkly 
through those keen eyes of Swift. 

A remarkable story is told by Scott, of Delany, who inter- 
rupted Archbishop King and Swift in a conversation which left 
the prelate in tears, and from which Swift rushed away with 
marks of strong terror and agitation in his countenance, upon 
which the Archbishop said to Delany, " You have just met the 
most unhappy man on earth ; but on the subject of his wretch- 
edness you must never ask a question." 

The most unhappy man on earth ; — Miserrimus — what a 



394 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



character of him ! And at this time all the great wits of Eng- 
land had been at his feet. All Ireland had shouted after him, 
and worshipped him as a liberator, a savior, the greatest Irish 
patriot and citizen. Dean Drapier Bickerstaff Gulliver — the 
most famous statesmen, and the greatest poets of his day, had 
applauded him, and done him homage ; and at this time, writ- 
ing over to Bolingbroke from Ireland, he says, " It is time for 
me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get 
into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here 
in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole " 

We have spoken about the men and Swift's behavior to 
them ; and now it behoves us not to forget that there are cer- 
tain other persons in the creation who had rather intimate 
relations with the great Dean.* Two women whom he loved 
and injured are known by every reader of books so famil- 
iarly that if we had seen them, or if they had been relatives of 
our own, we scarcely could have known them better. Who 
hasn't in his mind an image of Stella ? Who does not love 
her ? Fair and tender creature : pure and affectionate heart ! 
Boots it to you, now that you have been at rest for a hundred 
and twenty years, not divided in death from the cold heart 
which caused yours, while it beat, such faithful pangs of love 
and grief — boots it to you now, that the whole world loves and 
deplores you ? Scarce any man, I believe, ever thought of that 
grave, that did not cast a flower of pity on it, and write over it 
a sweet epitaph. Gentle lady, so lovelj, so loving, so unhappy ! 
you have had countless champions ; millions of manly hearts 
mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up 
the fond tradition of your beauty ; we watch and follow your 
tragedy, your bright morning love and purity, your constancy, 

* The name of Varina has been thrown into the shade by those of the famous 
Stella and Vanessa ; but she had a story of her own to tell about the blue eyes of 
young Jonathan. One may say that the book of Swift's Life opens at places kept by 
these blighted flowers ! Varina must have a paragraph. 

She was a Miss Jane Waryng, sister to a college chum of his. In 1696, when 
Swift was nineteen years old, we find him writing a love-letter to her, beginning, '" Im 
patience is the most inseparable quality of a lover." But absence made a great differ- 
ence in his feelings ; so, four years afterwards, the tone is changed. He writes again, 
a very curious letter, offering to marry her, and putting the offer in such a way that 
nobody could possibly accept it. 

After dwelling on his poverty, &c., he says, conditionally, " I shall be blessed to 
have you in my arms, without regarding whether your person be beautiful, or your 
fortune large. Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the second, is all I ask 
f or ! " 

The editors do not tell us what became of Varina in life. One would be glad to 
know that she mat with some worthy partner, and lived long enough to see her little 
boys laughing over Lilliput, without any arriire pensee of a sad character about the 
great Dean I 



SWIFT. 395 

your grief, your sweet martyrdom. We know your legend by 
heart. You are one of the saints of English story. 

And if Stella's love and innocence are charming to contem- 
plate, I will say that in spite of ill-usage, in spite of drawbacks, 
in spite of mysterious separation and union, of hope delayed 
and sickened heart — in the teeth of Vanessa and that little 
episodical aberration which plunged Swift into such woeful pit- 
falls and quagmires of amorous perplexity — in spite of the 
verdicts of most women, I believe, who, as far as my experience 
and conversation go, generally take Vanessa's part in the con- 
troversy — in spite of the tears which Swift caused Stella to 
shed, and the rocks and barriers which fate and temper inter- 
posed, and which prevented the pure course of that true love 
from running smoothly — the brightest part of Swift's story, 
the pure star in that dark and tempestuous life of Swift's, is 
his love for Hester Johnson. It has been my business, pro- 
fessionally of course, to go through a deal of sentimental 
reading in my time, and to acquaint myself with love-making, 
as it has been described in various languages, and at various 
ages of the world ; and I know of nothing more manly, more 
tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these brief 
notes, written in what Swift calls " his little language " in his 
journal to Stella.* He writes to her night and morning often. 
He never sends away a letter to her but he begins a new one 
on the same day. He can't bear to let go her kind little hand, 
as it were. He knows that she is thinking of him, and longing 
for him far away in Dublin yonder. He takes her letters from 
under his pillow and talks to them, familiarly, paternally, with 
fond epithets and pretty caresses — as he would to the sweet 
and artless creature who loved him. " Stay," he writes one 
morning — it is the 14th of December, 17 10 — "Stay, I will 
answer some of your letter this morning in bed. Let me see. 
Come and appear, little letter ! Here I am, says he, and what 
say you to Stella this morning fresh and fasting? Andean 

* A sentimental Champollion might find a good deal of matter for his art, in ex- 
pounding the symbols of the "Little Language." Usually, Stella is " M. D.," but 
sometimes her companion, Mrs. Dingly, is included in it. Swift is " Presto ; " also 
P.D.F.R. We have "Good-night, M.D. ; Night, M.D. ; Little, M.D. ; Stellakins ; 
Pretty Stella ; Dear, roguish, impudent, pretty M. D." Every now and then he 
breaks into rhyme, as — 

" I wish you both a merry new year, 
Roast-beef, minced-pies, and good strong beer, 
And me a share of your good cheer, 
That I was there, as you were here, 
And you a little saucy dear." 



396 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Stella read this writing without hurting her dear eyes ? " he 
goes on, after more kind prattle and fond whispering. The 
dear eyes shine clearly upon him tiien — the good angel of his 
life is with him and blessing him. Ah, it was a hard fa?e that 
wrung from them so many tears, and stabbed pitilessly that pure 
and tender bosom. A hard fate ; but would she have changed it ? 
I have heard a woman say that she would have taken Swift's 
cruelty to have had his tenderness. He had a sort of worship 
for her whilst he wounded her. He speaks of her after she is 
gone ; of her wit, of her kindness, of her grace, of her beauty, 
with a simple love and reverence that are indescribably touch- 
ing ; in contemplation of her goodness his hard heart melts 
into pathos ; his cold rhyme kindles and glows into poetry, 
and he falls down on his knees, so to speak, before the angel 
whose life he had embittered, confesses his own wretched- 
ness and unworthiness, and adores her with cries of remorse 
and love : — 

" \Vhen on my sickly couch I lay, 
Impatient both of night and day, 
And groaning in unmanly strains, 
Called every power to case my pains. 
Then Stella ran to my relief, 
With cheerful face and inward grief. 
And though by heaven's severe decree 
She suffers hourly more than me, 
No cruel master could require 
From slaves employed for daily hire, 
What Stella, by her friendship warmed, 
With vigor and delight performed. 
Now, with a soft and silent tread, 
Unheard she moves about my bed : 
My sinking spirits now supplies 
With cordials in her hands and eyes. 
Best pattern of true friends I beware ; 
You pay too dearly for your care 
If, while your tenderness secures 
My life, it must endanger yours: 
For such a fool was never found 
Who pulled a palace to the ground, 
Only to have the ruins made 
Materials for a house decayed." 

One little triumph Stella had in her life — one dear little 
piece of injustice was performed in her favor, for which I con- 
fess, for my part, I can't help thanking fate and the Dean. 
That other person was sacrificed to her — that — that young wo- 
man, who lived five doors from Dr. Swift's lodgings in Bury 
Street, and who flattered him, and made love to him in such an 
outrageous manner — Vanessa was thrown over. 

Swift did not keep Stella's letters to him in reply to those 



SWIFT. 



397 



he wrote to her.* He kept Bolingbroke's, and Pope's, and 
Harley's, and Peterborough's : but Stella, " very carefully," the 
Lives say, kept Swift's. Of course : that is the way of the 
world : and so we cannot tell what her style was, or of what 
sort were the little letters which the Doctor placed there at 
night, and bade to appear from under his pillow of a morning. 
But in letter IV. of that famous collection he describes his 
lodging in Bury Street, where he has the first floor, a dining- 
room and bed chamber, at eight, shillings a week ; and in letter 
VI. he says " he has visited a lady just come to town," whose 
name somehow is not mentioned ; and in Letter VIII. he 
enters a query of Stella's — " What do you mean ' that boards 
near me, that I dine with now and then ? ' What the deuce ! 
You know whom I hn e dined with every day since I left you, 
better than I do." Of course she does. Of course Swift has 
not the slightest idea of what she means. But in a few letters 
more it turns out that the Doctor has been to dine " gravely " 
with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh : then that he has been to " his neigh- 
bor : " then that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the 

• The following passages are from a paper begun by Swift on the evening of the 
day of her death, Jan. 28, 1727-S : — 

" She was sickly from her childhood, until about the age of fifteen ; but then she 
grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, 
and agreeable young women in London — only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker 
than a raven and every feature of her face in perfection. 

i< * * * * Properly speaking " — he goes on, with a calmness which, under the 
circumstances, is terrible — " she has been dying six months I * * * * 

" Never was any of her se.x born with better gifts of the mind, or who more im- 
proved them by reading and conversation. * * * * All of us who had the happi- 
ness of her friendship agreed unanimously that in an afternoon's or evening's conver- 
sation she never failed before we parted of delivering the best thing that was said in 
the company. Some of us have written down several of her sayings, or what the 
French call bans mots, wherem she excelled beyond belief." 

Tlie specimens on record, however, in the Dean's paper, called " Bons Mots de 
Stella," carcely bears out this last part of the paneg>Tic. But the following prove 
her wit : — 

"A gentleman who had been very silly and pert in her company, at last began to 
grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A bishop sitting by comforted 
him — that he should be easy, because " the child was gone to heaven.' ' No, my 
lord,' said she ; ' that is it which most grieves him, because he is sure never to see his 
child there." 

*' When she was extremely ill, her physician said, ' Madam, you are near the 
bottom of the hill, but we will endeavor to get you up again.' She answered, ' Doctor, 
I fear I shall be out of breatli before I get up to the top.' 

" A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repar- 
tees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty. He was at 
a loss ; but she solved the difficulty by saying. ' The Doctor's nails grew dirty by 
scratching himself.' 

" A Quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked ; it had a broad brim, and a label of 
paper about its neck. ' What is that '' ' — said she — ' my apothecary's son ! ' The ridic- 
ulous resemblance, and tlie suddenness of the question, set us all a-laughing."— 
Swift's Works, Scott's Ed. vol. ix. 295-61; 



398 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



whole week with his neighbor ! Stella was quite right in her 

previsions. She saw from the very first hint, what was going 
to happen ; and scented Vanessa in the air.* The rival is at 
the Dean's feet. The pupil and teacher are reading together, 
and drinking tea together, and going to prayers together, and 
learning Latin together, and conjugating amo, amas, ainavi to- 
gether. The little language is over for poor Stella. By the 
rule of grammar and the course of conjugation, doesn't amavi 
come after amo and ai7ias ? 

The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa f you may peruse in 
Cadenus's own poem on the subject, and in poor Vanessa's 
vehement expostulatory verses and letters to him ; she adores 
him, implores him, admires him, thinks him something god- 
like, and only prays to be admitted to lie at his feet.f As 
they are bringing him home from church, those divine feet of 
Dr. Swift's are found pretty often in Vanessa's parlor. He 
likes to be admired and adored. He finds Miss Vanhomrigh 
to be a woman of great taste and spirit, and beauty and wit, 
and a fortune too. He sees her every day ; he does not tell 
Stella about the business : until the impetuous Vanessa be- 
comes too fond of him, until the Doctor is quite frightened by 

* I am so hot and lazy after my mom'ng's walk, that I loitered at Mrs. Van- 
honi'^h's, whore my best %o\\\\ and periwij was, and out of mere listlessncss dine 
there very often ; So I did to-day." — Journal to Stella. 

Mrs. Vanhomrigh, " Vanessa's'' mother, was the widow of a Dutch merchant who 
held lucrative appointments in King William's time. The family settled in London 
in 1709, and had a house in Bury Street, St. James's — a street made notable by such 
residents as Swift and Steele ; and, in our own time, Moore and Crabbe. 

t " Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus is fine 
painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress ; impatient to be admired ; 
very romantic in her turn of mind; superior, in her own opinion, to all her sex ; full 
of pertuess, gayety, and pride ; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but far 
from being either beautiful or genteel ; * * * * happy in the thoughts of being 
reported Swift's concubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife." — Lord 
Orrery. 

t " You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You had 
bettor have said, as often as jou can get the better of your inclinations so much ; or 
as often as you remember tliere was such a one in the world. If you continue to treat 
me as you do, you v/ill not bo made uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe 
wliat I have suffered since I saw you last : I am sure I could have borne the rack 
much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to 
die without seeing you more ; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long ; 
for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world 
I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me ; for I am 
sure you'd not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. 
The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you ; for 
when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks 
so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh ! that you may have but so much regard for 
me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I 
can ; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me; 
and believe I cannot help telling you this and live." — Vanessa. (M. 1714.) 



SWIFT. 



399 



the young woman's ardor, and confounded by her wannth. He 
wanted to marry neither of them — that I believe was the truth ; 
but if he had not married Stella, Vanessa would have had him 
in spite of himself. When he went back to Ireland, his Ari- 
adne, not content to remain in her isle, pursued the fuc^itive 
Dean. In vain he protested, he vowed, he soothed, and bullied ; 
the news of the Dean's marriage with Stella at last came to 
her, and it killed her — she died of that passion.* 

* "If we consider Swift's behavior, so far only as it relates to women, we shall 
find tliat he looked upon them rather as busts than as whole figures." — Orrery. 

" You would have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of very vir- 
tuous women, who attended him from morning till night."' — Qrrery. 

A correspondent of Sir Waiter Scott's furnished him with the materials on which 
to found the following interesting passage about Vanessa — after she liad retired to 
cherish her passion in retreat : — 

" Marley .Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built much 
in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man 
(upwards of ninety, by his own account) showed the grounds to my correspondent. 
He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in 
the garden when a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well ; and his 
account of her corresponded with the usual description of her perse n, especially as to 
her cmhonpaint. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company : her con- 
stant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden. * * * She avoided com- 
pany, and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she 
seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The 
old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with 
her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He sliowed her favorite seat, still 
called ' Vanessa's bower.' Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot. 
* * * * There were two scats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of 
which commanded a view of the Liffey. * * * * In this sequestered spot, accord- 
ing to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books 
and writing materials on the table before them. — Scott's Swift, vol. i. pp. 2^6-7. 

i( * * "* * gilt jiiss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found 
herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with t'r.e 
object of her affections — to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of 
his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connection with 
Mrs. jolinson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long 
excited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be fourd 
in their correspondence, and that so early as 17?-;, when she writes to him — then in 
Ireland — ' If you are very liappy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, cxccfi 'ris 
what is inconsistent zvith mine." Her silence and patience under this state of 
uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe for 
Swift, and, partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival's health, which, from year 
to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's 
impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Jolmson 
herself, requesting to know the nature of that connection., Stella, in reply, informed 
her of her marriage with the Dean ; and full of the highest resentment against Swift 
for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries 
implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogation, and, without seeing him, or 
awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader 
knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was 
lia'ole, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered 
the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to 
express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with si'ch terror that she 
could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on 
the table, and, instantly leaving the house, mounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. 



400 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had written 
beautifully regarding her, " That doesn't surprise me," said Mrs. 
Stella, '' for we all know the Dean could write beautifully about 
a broomstick." A woman — a true woman ! Would you have 
had one of them forgive the other ? 

In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. 
Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's hair, enclosed in a 
paper by Swift, on which are written, in the Dean's hand, the 
words : " Only a ivomuji's hair." An instance, says Scott, of 
the Dean's desire to veil his feelings under the mask of cyni- 
cal indifference. 

See the various notions of critics ! Do those words indi- 
cate indifference or an attempt to hide feeling .? Did you ever 
hear or read four words more pathetic? Only a woman's hair: 
only love, only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty ;only the 
tenderest heart in the world stricken and wounded, and passed 
away now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love insult- 
ed, and pitiless desertion : — only that lock of hair left ; and 
memory and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering 
over the grave of his victim. 

And yet to have had so much love, he must have given 
some. Treasures of wit and wisdom, and tenderness, too, 
must that man have had locked up in the caverns of his gloomy 
heart, and shone fitfully to one or two whom he took in there. 
But it was not good to visit that place. People did not remain 
there long, and suffered for having been there.* He shrank 
away from all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa 
both died near him and away from him. He had not heart 
enough to see them die. He broke from his fastest friend, 
Sheridan ; he slunk away from his fondest admirer. Pope. His 
laugh jars on one's ear after seven-score years. He was always 
alone — alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when 
Stella's sweet smile came and shone upon him. When that 
went, silence and utter night closed over him. An immense 

When Vanessa opened the packet she only found her own letter to Stella. It was 
her death warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed yet 
cherished hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained 
wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived this 
last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few 
weeks." — Scott. 

* " M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. II 
n'a pas, i la verite, la gaite du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la laison, le choix, le 
bon gout qui manquent \ notre cure de Meudon. Ses vers sont d'un gout smgulier, 
et presque inimitable ; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose ; maig 
pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit voyage dans son pays." — Voltaire r 
Lettres sttr les Anidais. Let 22. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON, 



401 



genius : an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems 
to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. 
We have other great names to mention — none I think, how- 
ever, so great or so gloomy. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON 

A GREAT number of years ago, before the passing of the 
Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating 
club, called the " Union ; " and I remember that there was a 
tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that 
renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the 
Oppositon and Government had their eyes upon the University 
Debating Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there 
he ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great 
nobleman's nominee. So Jones of John's, or Tiaompson of 
Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping themselves in 
their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at 
priests and kings, with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mira- 
beau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman's emissary 
was listening to the debate from the back benches, where he was 
sitting with the family seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said 
that one or two young Cambridge men, orators of the "Union," 
were actually caught up thence, and carried down to Cornwall 
or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a young 
fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on 
in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the parliamentary 
chariot. 

Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of Peers and 
Members of Parliament in Anne's and George's time ? Were 
they all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the 
watch .'' How was it that the young gentlemen from the Uni- 
versity got such a prodigious number of places } A lad com- 
posed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinit}'-, in 
which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the 
French king assailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene compli- 
mented, or the reverse ; and the party in power was presently 
to provide for the young poet ; and a commissionership, or a 
post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an Embassy, or a 
clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A 

26 



402 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

wonderful fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby's. What have 
men of letters got in our time ? Think, not only of Swift, a 
king fit to rule in any time or empire — but Addison, Steele, 
Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many 
others, who got public employment, and pretty little pickings 
out of the public purse.* The wits of whose names we shall 
treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched 
the King's coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy 
quarter-day coming round for them. 

They all began at school or college in the regular way, pro- 
ducing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called 
odes upon public events, battles, seiges, court marriages and 
deaths, in which the gods of Olympus and the tragic muse were 
fatigued with invocations, according to the fashion of the time 
in France and in England. " Aid us. Mars, Bacchus, Apollo," 
cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. 
'''' Accunrez, chasies ny7nphcs du Fermesse" says Boileau, celebrat- 
ing the Grand Monarch. '■'■ Dcs soiis que 7iia /yre eii/at2te max- 
ques en bien la cadence, d vous vcnts^faitcs silence ! je vais parlcr 
de Louis !" Schoolboys' themes and foundation exercises are 
the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olym- 
pians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man 
of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country news- 
paper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the 
birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman ? 
In the past century the young gentlemen of the Universities all 
exercised themselves at these queer compositions ; and some 
got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and 
many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were 
pleased to call their muses. 

* The followin!T is a conspectus of them : — 

Addison. — Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the 
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ; Keeper of the Records in Ireland ; Lord 
of Trade ; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively. 

Steele. — Commissioner of the Stamp Office ; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at 
Hampton Court ; and Ciovernor of the Royal Company of Comedians ; 
Commissioner of " Forfeited Estates in Scotland." 

Prior. — Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague ; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to 
King William ; Secretary to the Embassy in France ; Under Secretary 
of State ; Ambassador to France. 

Tickell. — Under Secretary of State ; Secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland. 

Congreve. — Commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches ; Commissioner for Wine 
Licenses ; place in the Pipe Office ; post in the Custom House ; Secre- 
tary of Jamaica. 

Gay. —Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover.) 

John Dennis. — A place in the Custom House. 

" En Angleterre * * * * les lettres sont plus en honneur qu'ici." — Voltaire: 

Lettres sur les Anglais. Let. 20. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 



403 



William Congreve's* Pindaric Odes are still to be found in 
•* Johnson's Poets," that now unfrequented poets'-corner. in 
which so many forgotten bigwigs have a niche ; but though he 
was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any- 
day, it was Congreve's wit and humor which first recommended 
him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded that his first play, 
the "Old Bachelor," brought our author to the notice of that 
great patron of English muses, Charles Montague Lord Hali- 
fax — who, being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state 
of ease and tranquillity, instantly made him one of the Com- 
missioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him 
soon after a place in the Pipe Office, and likewise a post in the 
Custom House of the value of 600/. 

A commissionersbip of hackney-coaches — a post in the 
Custom House — a place in the Pipe Office, and all for writing 
a comedy ! Doesn't it sound like a fable, that place in the 
Pipe Office ? f " Ah, I'heureux temps que celui de ces fables ! " 
Men of letters there still be : but I doubt whether any Pipe 
Offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago. 

Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, 
and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places 
in society ; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here 
present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers 
at school, and will permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, 
the most eminent literary " swell " of his age. In my copy of 
" Johnson's Lives " Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on 
with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. " I am the 
great Mr. Congreve," he seems to say, looking out from his 
voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve. J 

* He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Con- 
greve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire — a very ancient family 

t " Pipe. — P'pa, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also W\^ great roll. 

" Pipe Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out 
leases of Crown lands, by warrant from the Lord Treasurer, or Commissioners of the 
Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

" Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c." — Rees : Cyclopczd. 
Art. Pipe. 

'' Pipe Office. — Spelman thinks so called, because the papers were kept in a large 
fipe or cask. 

'••These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which 
we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe * * * because the whole receipt is finally 
conveyed into it by means of divers small //)5f 5 or quills.'— Bacon : The Office of 
Alienations." 

[We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But 
a modern man of letters can know little on these points — by experience.] 

X " It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in the least ; nor 
was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His 
place in the Custom House, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have 
brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year." — Biog. Brit., Art. Congreve. 



404 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



From the beginning of liis career until the end everybody ad- 
mired him. Having got his education in Ireland, at the same 
school and college with Swift, he came to live in the Middle 
Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to 
the law ; but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and 
theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, the Piazza, 
and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. 
Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. 
Dryden * declared that he was equal to Shakspeare, and be- 
queathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes 
of him : " Mr. Congreve has done me the favor to review the 
'yEneis,'and compare my version with the original. I shall 
never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has 
showed me many faults which I have endeavored to correct." 

The " excellent young man " was but three or four and 
twenty when the great Dryden thus spoke of him : the greatest 
literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, 
himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a 
school of wits who daily gathered round his chair and tobacco- 
pipe at Will's. Pope dedicated his " Iliad " to him ; f Swift, 

* Dryden addressed his " twelfth epistle " to " My dear friend, Mr. Congreve," on 
his comedy called the " Double Dealer," in which he says : — 

"Great Johnson did by strength of judgment please; 
Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease. 
In differing talents both adorned their age : 
One for the study, t'other for the stage. 
But both to Congreve justly shall submit, 
One match'd in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit. 
In him all beauties of this age we see," &c., &c. 

The " Double Dealer," however, was not so palpable a hit as the " Old Bachelor," 
but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our " Swell " 
applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the " Epistle Dedicatory '' to 
the " Right Honorable Charles Montague." 

" 1 was conscious," said he, " where a true critic might have put me upon my 
defence. I was prepared for the attack, * * * * but I have not heard anything 
said sufficient to provoke an answer." 

He goes on — 

" But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms 
that are made upon me ; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily 
sorry for it ; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one 
of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and 
affected. How can I help it .'' It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and 
follies of human kind. * * *. * I sliould be very glad of an opportunity to make 
my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it 
in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon w/icn he is letting their blood.'' 

t " Instead of endeavoring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave be- 
hind me a memorial of my friendship with one of the most valuable men as well as 
finest writers of my age and country — one who has tried, and knows by his own 
experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer — and one who, I am 
sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labors. To him, therefore, having 
brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honor 
and satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of l\Ir. Congreve and of 
—A. Pope." — Postcript to Translation of the Iliad oj Homer , Mar. 25, 172-. 



CONGREVE AND ADD/SON. 405 

Addison, Steele, all acknowledge Congreve's rank, and lavish 
compliments upon him. Voltaire went to wait upon him as one 
of the Representatives of Literature ; and the man who scarce 
praises any other living person — who flung abuse at Pope, and 
Swift, and Steele, and Addison — the Grub Street Timon, old 
John Dennis,* was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve ; and said 
that when he retired from the stage, Comedy went with him. 

Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in 
the drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses ; as much be- 
loved in the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and con- 
quered, and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle,t the heroine of all 
his plays, the favorite of all the town in her day ; and the 
Duchess of Marlborough, Marlborough's daughter, had such an 
admiration of him, that when he died she had an ivory figure 
made to imitate him,| and a large wax doll with gouty feet to 
be dressed just as the great Congreve's gouty feet were dressed 
in his great lifetime. He saved some money by his Pipe 
Office, and his Custom House office, and his Hackney Coach 
office, and nobly left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it,§ but 
to the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn't. || 

* " When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said he had much 
rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for our author, and 
generously took him under his protection in his high authoritative manner." — Thos. 
Davies : Dramatic Miscellanies. 

t " Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived in the 
same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the young Duchess 
of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess showed me a diamond 
necklace (which*lLady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, 
and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it 
have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle." — Dr. Young. Spetice's 
Anecdotes. 

J " A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her 
Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it." — Thos. Davies : Dra- 
matic Miscellanies. 

§ The sum Congreve left Mrs. Bracegirdle was 200/., as is said in the " Dramatic 
Miscellanies" of Tom Davies; where are some particulars about this charming 
actress and beautiful woman. 

She had a " lively aspect," says Tom, on the authority of Gibber, and " such a 
glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired everybody with 
desire." " Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of them her lovers." 

Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. " In Tamerlane, 
Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla. * * * ; Congreve insinuated 
his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in ' Love for Love ; ' in his Osmyn to 
her Almena, in the ' Mourning Bride;' and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, 
in the ' Way of the World.' Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not 
very distant from the real character of Congreve." — Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii. 
1784. 

She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public favorite. 
She died in 174S, in the eighty-fifth year of her age. 

II Johnson calls his legacy the " accumulation of attentive parsimony, which," he 
continues, " though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, might have given 
great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the 
imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress." — Lives of the Poets. 



* 
4o6 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

How can I introduce to you that merry and shameless 
Comic Muse who won him such a reputation ? Nell Gwynn's 
servant fought the other footman for having called his mistress 
a bad name ; and in like manner, and with pretty like epithets, 
Jeremy Collier attacked that godless, reckless Jezebel, the 
English comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn's 
man's fellow-servants called Nell Gwynn's man's mistress. 
The servants of the theatre, Dryden, Congreve,* and others, 
defended themselves with the same success, and for the same 
cause which set Nell's lackey fighting. She was a disreputable, 
daring, laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic Muse. 
She came over from the Continent with Charles (who chose 
many more of his female friends there) at the Restoration — a 
wild, dishevelled Lais, with eyes bright with wit and wine — a 
saucy court-favorite that sat at the king's knees, and laughed 
in his face, and when she showed her bold cheeks at her 
chariot-window, had some of the noblest and most famous 
people of the land bowing round her wheel. She was kind 
and popular enough, that daring Comedy, that audacious poor 
Nell : she was gay and generous, kind, frank, as such people 
can afford to be : and the men who lived with her and laughed 
with her, took her pay and drank her wine, turned out when 
the Puritans hooted her, to fight and defend her. But the jade 
was indefensible, and it is pretty certain her servants knew it. 

There is life and death going on in everything : truth and 
lies always at battle. Pleasure is always warring against self- 
restraint. Doubt is always crying Psha ! and sneeifng. A man 
in life, a humorist, in writing about life, sways over to one 
principle or the other, and laughs with the reverence for right 
and the love of truth in his heart, or laughs at these from the 
other side. Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious busi- 

* He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called " Amendments of Mr. Collier's 
False and Imperfect Citations," &c. A specimen or two are subjoined : — 

" The greater part of these examples which he has produced are only demonstra- 
tions of his own impurity : they only savor of his utterance, and were sweet enough 
till tainted by his breath. 

" Where the expression is unblamable in its own pure and genuine signification, 
he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit ; he possesses the innocent phrase, and 
makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies. 

" If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not very 
well versed in his nomenclatures. * * * i vvill only call him Mr. Collier, and that 
I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it. 

'' The corruption of a rott;n divine is the generation of a sour critic." 

" Congreve," says Dr. Johnson, "a very young man, elated with success, and impa- 
tient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security. * * * The dispute was 
protracted through ten years ; but at last Comedy grew more modest, and Collier 
lived to see the reward of liis labors in the reformation of the theatre." — Life oj 
Congreve. 



CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 



407 



ness to Harlequin ? I have read two or three of Congreve's 
plays over before speaking of him ; and my feelings were 
rather like those, which I dare say most of us here have had, 
at Pompeii, looking at Sallust's house and the relics of an orgy: 
a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast of a 
dancing-girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a 
jester : a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone twangs 
his moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The 
Congreve Muse is dead, and her song choked in Time's ashes. 
We gaze at the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once 
revelled in its mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse 
over the frolic and daring, the wit, scorn, passion, hope, desire, 
with which that empty bowl once fermented. We think of the 
glances that allured, the tears that melted, of the bright eyes 
that shone in those vacant sockets; and of lips whispering love, 
and cheeks dimpling with smiles, that once covered yon ghast- 
ly yellow framework. They used to call those teeth pearls 
once. See ! there's the cup she drank from, the gold chain 
she wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge for her 
cheeks, her looking-glass, and the harp she used to dance to. 
Instead of a feast we find a gravestone, and in place of a mis- 
tress a few bones ! 

Reading in these plays now is like shutting your ears and 
looking at people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, 
the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling and retreating, the cavalier 
seul advancing upon those ladies — those ladies and men twirl- 
ing round at the end in a mad galop, after which everj^body 
bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we 
can't understand that comic dance of the last century — its 
strange gravity and gayety, its decorum or its indecorum. It 
has a jargon of its own quite unlike life ; a sort of moral of its 
own quite unlike life too. I'm afraid it's a Heathen mystery, 
symbolizing a Pagan doctrine ; protesting — as the Pompeians 
very likely were, assembled at their theatre and laughing at 
their games j as Sallust and his friends, and their mistresses, 
protested, crowned with flowers, with cups in their hands — 
against the new, hard, ascetic, pleasure-hating doctrine whose 
gaunt disciples, lately passed over from the Asian shores of the 
Mediterranean, were for breaking the fair images of Venus and 
flinging the altars of Bacchus down, 

I fancy poor Congreve's theatre is a temple of Pagan de- 
lights, and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I 
fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and wor- 
ship, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites frorn 



4o8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the 
beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for 
having the young wife : in the ballad, when the poet bids his 
mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old 
Time is still a-flying : in the ballet, when honest Corydon 
courts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, 
and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, 
•who is opportunely asleep ; and when seduced by the invita- 
tions of the rosy youth she comes forvvard to the footlights, and 
they perform on each other's tiptoes that pas which you all 
know, and which is only interrupted by old grandpapa awaking 
from his doze at the pasteboard chalet, (whither he returns to 
take another nap in case the young people get an encore) : 
when Harlequin, splendid in youth, strength, and agility, 
arrayed in gold and a thousand colors, springs over the heads 
of countless perils, leaps down the throat of bewildered giants, 
and, dauntless and splendid, dances danger down : when Mr. 
Punch, that godless old rebel, breaks every law and laughs at 
it with odious triumph, outwits his lawyer, bullies the beadle, 
knocks his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman — don't 
you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged 
little Punch's puppet-show — the Pagan protest ? Doesn't it 
seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment ? Look 
how the lovers walk and hold each other's hands and whisper! 
Sing the cljorus — "There is nothing like. love, there is nothing 
like youth, there is nothing like beauty of your spring-time. 
Look ! how old age tries to meddle with merry sport ! Beat 
him with his own crutch, the wrinkled old dotard ! There is 
nothing like beauty, there is nothing like strength. Strength 
and valor win beauty and youth. Be brave and conquer. Be 
young and happy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy ! Would you know the 
Segreto p^r esser fclice ? Here it is in a smiling mistress and a 
cup of P'alernian." As the boy tosses the cup and sings his 
song — hark! what is that chaunt coming nearer and nearer? 
What is that dirge which will disturb us ? The lights of the 
festival burn dim — the cheeks turn pale — the voice quavers — ■ 
and the cup drops on the floor. Who's there ? Death and 
Fate are at the gate, and they will come in. 

Congreve's comic feast flares with lights, and round the 
table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging 
the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on 
by rascally valets and attendants as dissolute as their mistresses 
—perhaps the very worst company in the world. There doesn't 
seem to be a pretence of morals. At the head of the table sits 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 



409 



Mirabel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited 
on by English imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling 
is to be irresistible, and to conquer everywhere. Like the heroes 
of the chivalry story, whose long-winded loves and combats 
they were sending out of fashion, they are always splendid and 
triumphant — overcome all dangers, vanquish all enemies, and 
win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands, usurers are the 
foes these champions contend with. They are merciless in old 
age, invariably, and an old man plays the part in the drama 
which the wicked enchanter or the great blundering giant per- 
forms in the chivalry tales, who threatens and grumbles aijd 
resists — a huge stupid obstacle always overcome by the kniglit. 
It is an old man with a money-box: Sir Belmour his son or 
nephew spends his money and laughs at him. It is an old man 
with a young wife whoni he locks up : Sir Mirabel robs him of 
his wife, trips up his gouty old heels and leaves the old hunks. 
The old fool, what business has he to hoard his money, or to 
lock up blushing eighteen ? Money is for youth, love is for 
youth, away with the old people. When Millamant is sixt}^ 
having of course divorced the first Lady Millamant, and 
married his friend Doricourt's granddaughter out of the nurs- 
ery — it will be his. turn ; and young Belmour will make a fool 
of him. All this pretty morality you have in the comedies of 
William Congreve, Esq. They are full of wit. Such manners 
as he observes, he observes with great humor ; but ah ! it's a 
weary feast, that banquet of wit where no love is. It palls very 
soon ; sad indigestions follow it and lonely blank headaches in 
the morning. 

I can't pretend to quote scenes from the splendid Con- 
greve's plays* — which are undeniably bright, witty, and daring 

* The scene of Valentine's pretended madness in " Love for Love" is a splendid 
specimen of Congreve's daring manner : — • 

" Scajidal. — And have you given your master a hint of their plot upon him ? 

" Jeremy. — Yes, Sir ; he says he'll favor it, and mistake her for Angelica. 

" Scandal. — It may make us sport. 

" Foi-esight. — Mercy on us ! 

" Valentine. — Ilusht — interrupt me not — I'll whisper predictions to thee, and thou 
shalt prophesie ; — I am truth, and can teach thy tongue a new trick, — I have told thee 
what's passed — now I'll tell what's to come: — Dost thou know what will happen to- 
morrow? Answer me not — for I will tell thee. To-morrow knaves will thrive thro* 
craft, and fools thro' fortune ; and honesty will go as it did frostnipt in a summer 
suit. Ask me questions concerning to-morrow. 

" Scandal. — Ask him, il/r. Fofesighf. 

" Foresight. — Pray what will be done at Court ? 

" Valentine. — Scandal will tell you ; — I am truth, I never come there. 

" Foresight. — In the city ? 

" Valentine. — Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual hours. Yet 
you will see such zealous faces behind counters as if religion were to be sold in every 



4IO 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



' — any more than I could ask j^ou to hear the dialogue of a 
witty bargeman and a brilliant fishwoman exchanging compli- 

shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at 
noon, and the horn'd herd buzz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will 
drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee- 
houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt 'prentice that sweeps his 
master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But 
there are two things, that you will see very strange ; which are wanton wives with 
their legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks. But hold, I 
must examine you before I go further; you look suspiciously. Are you a husband? 

'■'■Foresight. — I am married. 

" Valentine. — Poor creature ! Is your wife of Covent-garden Parish ? 

'^Foresight. — No; St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. 
' " Valentine. — Alas, poor man ! his eyes arc sunk, and his hands shrivelled ; his 
legs dwindled, and his back bow'd. Pray, pray for a metamorphosis — change thy 
shape, and shake off age ; get thee Medea' s kettle and be boiled anew ; come forth 
with lab'ring callous hands, and chine of steel, and Atlas' shoulders. Let Taliacotius 
trim the calves of twenty chairmen, and ni.ike thee pedestals to stand erect upon, and 
look matrimony in the face. Ila, ha, ha 1 That a man should have a stomach to a 
wedding-supper, when the pidgeons ought rather to be laid to his feet. Ha, ha, ha ! 

" Foresight. — His frenzy is very high now, Mr. Scandal. 

" Scandal.— \ believe it is a spring-tide. 

" Foresight. — Very likely — truly ; you understand these matters. Mr. Scandal, 
I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things he has uttered. His sayings 
are very mysterious and hieroglyphical. 

" Valentine. — Ch ! why would Angelica be absent from my eyes so long ? 

" ycremy. — She's here, Sir. 

" Mrs. Foresight. — Now, Sister! 

" Mrs. Frail. — O Lord ! what must I say 

"Scandal. Humor him. Madam, by all means. 

"Valentine. — Where is she? Oh! I see her : she comes, like Riches, Health, and 
Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and abandoned wretch. Oh — welcome, 
welcome ! 

" Mrs. Frail. — How d'ye, Sir ? Can I serve you ? 

" Valentine. — Hark'ee — I have a secret to tell you. Endymion and the moon 
shall meet us on Mount Latmos, and we'll be married in the dead of night. But say 
not a word. Hymen shall put his torch into a dark lanthorn, that it may be secret ; 
and Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail; and 
Argus's hundred eyes be sliut — ha ! Nobody shall know, but Jeremy. 

" Mrs. Frail. — No, no , we'll keep it secret ; it shall be done presently. 

" Valentine. — The sooner the better. Jeremy, come hither — closer — that none 
may overhear us. Jeremy, I can tell you news : Angelica is turned nun, and 1 am 
turning friar, and yet we'll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl 
and beads, that I may play my part ; for she'll meet me two hours hence in black and 
white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won't see one another's faces 'till 
we have done something to be ashamed of, and then we'll blush once for all. * * * 
" Enter Tattle. 

" Tattle. — Do you know me, Valentine ? 

" Valentine. — You ! — who are you ? No, I hope not. 

" Tattle.— I am Jack Tattle, your friend. 

" Valentine. — My friend ! Wliat to do ? I am no married man, and thou canst 
not lye with my wife ; I am very poor, and thou canst not borrow money of me. 
Then, what employment have I for a friend ? 

" Tattle. — Hah ! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a secret 

" Angelica. — Do you know me, Valentine? 

" Valentine. — Oh, very well. 

" Angelica. — Who am I ? 

" Valentine. — You're a woman, one to whom Pleaven gave beauty when it grafted 
roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond ; and he that leaps at 



CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 



41 1 



ments at Billingsgate ; but some of his verses — they were 
amongst the most famous lyrics of the time, and pronounced 
equal to Horace by his contemporaries — may give an idea of his 
power, of his grace, of his daring manner, his magnificence in 
compliment, and his polished sarcasm. He writes as if he was 

you is sunk. You arc all white — a sheet of spotless paper — when you first are born ; 
but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill. I know you ; for I 
loved a woman, and loved her so long that I found out a strange thing : I found out 
what a woman was good for. 

" Tattle. — Ay ! pr'ythee, what's that? 

" Valejitine. — Whv, to keep a secret. 

« Tattlc.~Q Lord'! 

" Valentine. — Oh, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she should tell, 
yet she is not to be Lelieved. 

" Tattle. — Hah ! Good again, faith. 

" Valentine. — I would have musick. Sing me the song that I like." — Congreve : 
Love for Love. 

There is a Mrs. Nickleby, of the year 1700, in Congreve's Comedy of "The 
Double Dealer,'' in whose character the author introduces some wonderful traits of 
roguish satire. She is practised en by the gallants of the play, and no more knows 
how to resist them than any of the ladies above quoted could resist Congreve. 

" Lady Plyant. — Oh ! reflect upon the horror of your conduct ! Offering to per- 
vert me" [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady for her daughter's hand, 
not for her own] — " perverting me from the road of virtue, in which i have trod thus 
long, and never made one trip — not oTie faux fas. Oh, consider it • what would you 
have to answer for, if you should provoke me to frailty ! Alas I humanity is feeble, 
heaven knows ! Very feeble, and unable to support itself. 

" Mellcfont. — Where am I ? Is it day*? and am I awake ? Madam 

" Lady Plyant. — O Lord, ask me the question ! I'll swear I'll deny it — therefore 
don't ask me ; nay, you sha'n't ask me, I swear I'll deny it. O Gemini, you have 
brought all the blood into my face ; I wairant I am as red as a turkey-cock. O fie, 
cousin Mellefont ! 

" Mellcfont. — Nay, Madam, hear me ; I mean 

*'■ Lady Plyant. — Ilear you? No, no; V\\ deny you first, and hear you after- 
wards. For one does not know how one's mind may change upon hearing — hearing 
is one of the senses, and all the senses are fallible. I won't trust my honor, I assure 
you ; my honor is infallible and uncomatable. 

'■'■Mellefont. — For heaven's sake. Madam 

" Lady Plyant. — Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of heaven, 
and have so much wickedness in your heart ? May bo, you don't think it a sin. They 
say some of you gentlemen don't think it a sin ; but still, my honor, if it were no 
sin But, then, to marry my daughter for the convenience of frequent oppor- 
tunities — I'll never consent to that: as sure as can be, I'll break the match. 

" Mell:fo7it. — Death and amazement ! Madam, upon my knees 

" Lady Plyant. — Nay, nay, rise up ! come, you shall see my good-nature. I 
know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion. 'Tis not your fault ; nor I 
swear, it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms ? And how can you help 
it, if you are made a captive ? I swear it is pity it should be a fault ; but, my honor. 
Well, but your honor, too — but the sin ! Well, but tJie necessity. O Lord, here's 
somebody coming. I dare not stay. Well, you must consider of^ your crime : and 
strive as much as can be against it — strive, be sure ; but don't be melancholick — don't 
despair ; but never think that I'll grant you anything. O Lord, no ; but be sure you 
lay aside all thoughts of the marriage, for though I know you don't love Cynthia, only 
as a blind to )'our passion for me — yet it will make me jealous. O Lord, what did I 
say? Jealous! No, no, I can't be jealous; for I must not love you. Therefore, 
don't hope; but don't despair neither. Oh, they're coming; I must fly." — The 
Double Dealer : Act 2, sc. v. page 156. 



412 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



SO accustomed to conquer, that he has a poor opinion of his 
victims. Nothing's new except their faces, says he : " every 
woman is the same." He says this in his first comedy, whicii he 
wrote languidly * in illness, when he was an "excellent young 
man." Richelieu at eighty could have hardly said a more ex- 
cellent thing. 

When he advances to make one of his conquests, it is with 
a splendid gallantry, in full uniform and with the fiddles playing, 
like Grammont's French dandies attacking the breach of 
Lerida. 

" Cease, cease to ask her name," he writes of a young lady 
at the Wells at Tunbridge, whom he salutes with a magnificent 
compliment — 

" Cease, cease to ask her name, 
The crowned Muse's noblest theme, 
Whose glory by immortal fame 

Shall only sounded be. 
But if you long to know, 
Then look round yonder dazzling row; 
Who most does like an angel show, 

You may be sure 'tis she." 

Here are lines about another beauty, who perhaps was not so 
well pleased at the poet's manner of celebrating her — 

" When Lesbia first I saw, so heavenly fair, 
With eyes so bright and with that awful air, 
I thought my heart which durst so high aspire 
As bold as his who snatched celestial fire. 
But soon as e'er the beauteous idiot spoke, 
Fort h from her coral lips such folly broke : 
Like balm the trickling nonsense heal'd my wound, 
And what her eyes enthralled, her tongue unbound." 

Amoret is a cleverer woman than the lovely Lesbia, but the 
poet does not seem to respect one much more than the other ; 
and describes both with exquisite satirical humor — 

" Fair Amoret is gone astray : 

Pursue and seek her every lover. 
I'll tell the signs by which you may 
The wandering shepherdess discover. 

Coquet and coy at once her air, 

Both studied, though both seem neglected ; 

Careless she is with artful care, 
Affecting to seem unaffected. 

* " There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done 
everything by chance. The ' Old liachelor ' was written for amusement in the languor 
of oonvalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with great elaborateness of dialogue 
and incessant ambition of wit."— Johnson : Lives of the Poets. 



CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 41^5 

With skill her eyes dart every glance, 

Yet change so soon you'd ne'er suspect ihc3l 

For she'd persuade they wound by cliance, 
Though certain aim and art direct them. 

She likes herself, yet others hates 

For that which in herself she prizes ; 
And, while she laughs at them, forgets 

She is the thing that she despises." 

What could Amoret have done to bring down such shafts of 
ridicule upon her ? Could she have resisted the irresistible Mr, 
Congreve ? Could an3'body ? Could Sabina, vi'hen she woke 
and heard such a bard singing under her window ? " See " he 
writes — 

" See ! see, she wakes — Sabina wakes 

And now the sun begins to rise ? 
Less glorious is the morn, that breaks 

From his bright beams, than her fair eyes. 
With ligl.t united, day they give ; 

But different fates ere night fulfil : 
How many by his warmth will live ! 

How many will her coldness kill ! '' 

Are you melted? Don't you think him a divine man? 
If not touched by the brilliant Sabina, hear the devout 
Selinda : — 

" Pious Selinda goes to prayers, 

If I but ask the favor ; 
And yet the tender fool's in tears, 

When she believes I'll leave her : 
Would I were free from this restraint, 

Or else had hopes to win her : 
Would she could make of me a saint, 

Or I of her a sinner ! '' 

What a conquering air there is about these ! What an irre- 
sistible Mr. Congreve it is ! Sinner ! of course he will be a 
sinner, the delightful rascal ! Win her ! of course he will win 
her, the victorious rogue ! He knows he will : he must — with 
such a grace, with such a fashion, with such a splendid em- 
broidered suit. You see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously 
turned out, passing a fair jewelled hand through his dishevelled 
periwig, and delivering a killing' ogle along with his scented 
billet. And Sabina ? What a comparison that is between the 
nymph and the sun ! The sun gives Sabina the pas, and does 
not venture to rise before her ladyship : the morn's bright 
beams are less glorious than her fair eyes : but before night 
everybody will be frozen by her glances : everybody but onS 
lucky rogue who shall be nameless. Louis Quatorze in all his 



414 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

glory is hardly more splendid than our Phoebus Apollo of 
the Mall and Spring Gardens.* 

When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve, the latter 
rather affected to despise his literary reputation, and in this 
perhaps the great Congreve was not far wrong.f A touch of 
Steele's tenderness is worth all his finery ; a flash of Swift's 
lightning, a beam of Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry 
playhouse taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he 
was undoubtedly a pretty fellow.^ 

* " Among those by whom it (' Will's ') was frequented, Southerne and Congreve 
were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship. * * « But Congreve 
seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon Dryden's friendship. He was 
introduced lo him by his first pLiy, ihe celebrated ' Old Bachelor ' being put into the 
poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the 
stage, returned it to the author with the high and just commendation, that it was 
the best first play he had ever seen.'' — Scott's Drydoi, vol. i. p. 370. 

t It was in Surrey Street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire visited 
him, in the decline of his life. 

Tlie anecdote relating to his saying that he wished " to be visited on no other 
footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity,'' is common to 
all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Vol- 
taire's " Letters concerning the English Nation,'' published in London, 1733, as also 
in Goldsmith's " Memoir of Voltaire.'' But it is worthy of remark, that it does not 
appear in the text of tlie same Letters in the edition of Voltaire's "CEuvres Com- 
pletes " in the " Pantheon Literaire." Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1S37.) 

" Celui de tons les Anglais qui ^ porte le plus loin la gloire du theatre comique 
est feu M. Congreve. II n'a fait que peu de pieces, maistoutes sent excellentes dans 
Jeur genre. * * * Vous y voyez pat tout le langage des honnetes gens avec des 
actions de fripon ; ce qui prouve qu'il connaissait bien son monde, et qu'il vivait 
dans ce qu'on appelle la bonne compagnie." — Voltaire : Letires sur les Anglais. 
Let. 19. 

\ On the death of Queen Mary he published a Pastoral — " The Mourning Muse 
of Alexis." Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the orthodo.x way. The Queen 
is called Pastora. 

" I mourn Pastora dead, let Albion mourn, 
And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,'' 

says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that — 

" With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound. 
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground 

(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period) « • • 
continues- 

" Lord of these woods and wide extended plains, 
Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face, 
Scalding with tears the already faded grass. 
* * * * 

To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come ? 
And must Pastora moulder in the tomb? 
Ah Death ! more fierce and unrelenting far 
Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are ; 
V/ith lambs and s: eep their hungers are appeased, 
But ravenous Death the shepherdess has ieizcd." 

This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess — that 



CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 



415 



We have seen in Swift a humorous philosopher, whose 
truth frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. 
We have had in Congreve a humorous observer of another 
school, to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and 
whose ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, 
and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a 
deuce) when the time comes. We come now to a humor that 
flows from quite a different heart and spirit — a wit that makes 
us laugh and leaves us good and happy ; to one of the kindest 

figure of the " Great Shepherd " lying speechless on his stomach in a state of despair 
which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit — are to be remembered in 
poetry surely : and this style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great 
Congreve ! 

" In the " Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas " (the young Lord Blandford, the great 
Duke of Marlborough's only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah Duchess ! 

The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come into work here 
again. At the sight of her grief — 

" Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forego, 
And dumb distress and new compassion show, 
Nature herself attentive silence kept. 
And motion seemed sjtsf ended while she ivept ! ' 

And Pope dedicated the " Iliad'' to the author of these lines — and Dryden wrote to 
him in his great hand : 

" Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought. 
But genius must be born and never can be taught. 
This is your portion, this your native store ; 
Heaven, that but once was prodigal before, 
To Shakspeare gave as much she could not give him more. 

Maintaui your Post : that's all the fame you need, 
For 'tis impossible you should proceed ; 
Already I am worn with cares and age. 
And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage : 
Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense, 
I live a Rent-charge upon Providence : 
But you, whom eveiy Muse and Grace adom 
Whom I foresee to better fortune born. 
Be kind to my remains, and oh ! defend 
Against your Judgment your departed Friend 1 
Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue ; 
But shade those Lawrels which descend to You ; 
And take for Tribute what these Lines express ; 
You merit more, nor could my Love do less." 

This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day. In Shadwell, 
Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time, when gentlemen meet 
they fall into each other's arms, with "Jack, Jack, I must buss thee;'' or, ''Fore 
George, Harry, I must kiss thee, lad." And in a similar manner the poets saluted 
their brethren. Literary gentlemen do not kiss now ; I wonder if they love each 
other better ? 

Steele calls Congreve " Great Sir '' and " Great Author ; '' says " Well-dressed 
barbarians knew his awful name," and addresses him as if he were a prince ; and 
speaks of " Pastora " as one of the most famous tragic compositions. 



41 6 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

benefactors that society has ever had ; and I believe that you 
have divined already that I am about to mention Addison's 
honored name. 

From reading over his writings, and the biographies which 
we have of him, amongst which the famous article in the 
Edinburgh Review * may be cited as a magnificent statue of 
the great writer and moralist of the last age, raised by the love 
and the marvellous skill and genius of one of the most illus- 
trious artists of our own ; looking at that calm, fair face, and 
clear countenance — those chiselled features pure and cold, I 
can't but fancy that this great man — in this respect like him of 
whom we spoke in the last lecture — was also one of the lonely 
ones of the world. Such men have very few equals, and they 
don't herd with those. It is in the nature of such lords of in- 
tellect to be solitary — they are in the world but not of it ; and 
our minor struggles, brawls, successes, pass under them. 

Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fortitude not tried beyond 
ea?y endurance, his affections not much used, for his books 
were his family and his society was in jDublic ; admirably wiser, 
wittier, calmer, and more instructed than almost every man 
with whom he met, how could Addison suffer, desire, admire, 
feel much ?' I may expect a child to admire me for being taller 
or writing more cleverly than she ; but how can I ask my 
superior to say that I am a wonder when he knows better than 
I ? In Addison's days you could scarcely show him a literary 
performance, a sermon or a poem, or a piece of literary criti- 
cism, but he felt he could do better. His justice must have 
made him indifferent. He didn't praise, because he measured 
his compeers by a higher standard than common people have.f 
How was he who was so tall to look up to any but the loftiest 
genius .'' He must have stooped to put himself on a level with 

* " To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as 
any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and 
twenty years in Westminster Abbey. * * * After full inquiry and impartial 
reflection we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as 
can justly be claimed by any of our infirm and erring race." — Macaulay. 

'• Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable to 
believe that Addison's profession and practice were at no great variance; since, 
amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was passed, though his station 
made him conspicuous, and his activity made him formidable, the character given 
him by his friends was never contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom 
interest or opinion imited him, he had not only the esteem but the kindness ; and of 
others, whom the violence of opposition drove against him, though he might lose the 
love, he retained the reverence.'' — Johnson. 

I " Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had something more 
charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man ; but with any mix- 
ture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he seemed to preserve his dignity much, 
with a stiff sort of silence.'" — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON: 



417 



most men. By that profusion of graciousness and smiles with 
which Goethe or Scott, for instance, greeted almost every liter- 
ary beginner, every small literary adventurer who came to his 
court and went away charmed from the great king's audience, 
and cuddling to his heart the compliment which his literary 
majesty had paid him — each of the two good-natured poten- 
tates of letters brought their star and ribbon into discredit. 
Everybody had his majesty's orders. Everybody had his'majes- 
ty's cheap portrait, on a box surrounded with diamonds worth 
twopence apiece. A very great and just and wise man ought not 
to praise indiscriminately, but give his idea of the truth. Addi- 
son praises the ingenious Mr. Pinktheman : Addison praises 
the ingenious Mr. Dogget, the actor, whose benefit is coming 
off that night : Addison praises Don Saltero : Addison praises 
Milton with all his heart, bends his knee and frankly pays 
homage to that imperial genius.* But between those degrees 
of men his praise is very scanty. I don't think the great Mr. 
Addison liked young Mr. Pope, the Papist, much ; I don't 
think he abused him. But when Mr. Addison's men abused 
Mr. Pope, I don't think Addison took his pipe out of his mouth 
to contradict them.f 

Addison's father was a clergyman of good repute in Wilt- 
shire, and rose in the church. $ His famous son never lost his 
clerical training and scholastic gravity, and was called " a par- 
son in a tye-wig " § in London afterwards at a time when tye- 

* " Milton's chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence, lies in the sub- 
limity of his thoughts. There are others of the moderns, who rival him in every other 
part of poetry ; but in the greatness of his sentiments he triumphs over all the poets, 
both modern and ancient. Homer only excepted. It is impossible for the imagination 
of man to distend itself with greater ideas than those which he has laid together in his 
first, second, and sixth books." — Spectator, No. 279. 

" If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of working on 
the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one." — Ibid. No. 417. 

These famous papers appeared in each Saturday's Spectator, from January 19th 
to May 3d, 1 712. Beside his services to Milton, we may place those he did to Sacred 
Music. 

+ " Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards." — Pope. 
Spence' s Anecdotes. 

" ' Leave him as soon as you can,' said Addison to me, speaking of Pope ; 'he will 
certainly play you some devilish trick else ; he has an appetite to satire.' '' — Lady 
WoRTLEY Montagu. Spence's Anecdotes. 

X " Lancelot Addison, his father, was the ^nn of another Lancelot Addison, a 
clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield and Archdeacon of Cov- 
entry. 

§ " The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his company, 
declared, that he was ' a parson in a tye-wig,' can detract little from his character. He 
was always reserved to strangers, and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a char- 
acter like that of Mandeville." — Johnson. Lives of the Poets. 

" Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison ; he had a quarrel with him, and, 
after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to say of him — ' One day or other 

27 



41 8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

wigs were only worn by the laity, and the fathers of theology 
did not think it decent to appear except in a full bottom. 
Having been at school at Salisbury, and the Charterhouse, in 
1687, when he was fifteen years old, he went to Queen's Col- 
lege, Oxford, where he speedily began to distinguish himself 
by the making of Latin verses. The beautiful and fanciful 
poem of "The Pygmies and the Cranes," is still read by lovers 
of that sort of exercise ; and verses are extant in honor of 
King William, by which it appears that it was the loyal youth's 
custom to toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyaus : 
many more works are in the Collection, including one on the 
Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which was so good that Montague 
got him a pension of 300/. a year, on which Addison set out on 
his travels. 

During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued 
himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets 
at his fingers' ends when he travelled in Italy.* His patron 
went out of office, and his pension was unpaid : and hearing 
that this great scholar, now eminent and known to the literati 
of Europe (the great Boileau,t upon perusal of Mr. Addison's 
elegant hexameters, v/as first made aware that England was not 
altogether a barbarous nation) — hearing that the celebrated 
Mr. Addison, of Oxford, proposed to travel as governor to a 
young gentleman on the grand tour, the great Duke of Somer- 
set proposed to Mr. Addison to accompany his son, Lord 
Hartford. 

Mr. Addison was delighted to be of use to his Grace, and 
his lordship his Grace's son, and expressed himself ready to set 
forth. 

His Grace the Duke of Somerset now announced to one of 
the most famous scholars of Oxford and Europe that it was his 
gracious intention to allow my Lord Hartford's tutor one hun- 

you'll see that man a bishop — I'm sure he looks that way ; and indeed I ever thought 
him a priest in his heart.' " — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 

" Mr. Addison stayed above a year at BIols. He would rise as early as between 
tv^o and three in the height of summer, and lie abed till between eleven and twelve in 
the depth of winter. He was untalkative whilst here, and often thoughtful : sometimes 
so lost in thought, that I have come into his room and stayed five minutes there be- 
fore he has known anything of it. , He had his masters generally at supper with 
him ; kept very little company beside ; and had no amour that I know of ; and I think 
I should have known it if he had had any." — Abbe Philippeaux of Blois. 
Spencers Anecdotes. 

* " His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Clau- 
dian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound." — Macaulay. 

t " Oiw country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first conceived 
an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing the present he made him of 
the ' Musae Anglicanae.' " — Tickell : Preface to Addison's Works. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 



419 



dred guineas per annum. Mr. Addison wrote back tliat his 
services were his Grace's, but he by no means found his account 
in the recompense for them. The negotiation was broken off. 
Tliey parted witli a profusion of congees on one side and tlie 
other. 

Addison remained abroad for some time, living in the best 
society of Europe. How could he do otherwise ? He must 
have been one of the finest gentlemen the world ever saw : at 
all moments of life serene and courteous, cheerful and calm.* 
He could scarcely ever have had a degrading thought. He 
might have omitted a virtue or two, or many, but could not 
have had many faults committed for which he need blush or 
turn pale. When warmed into confidence, his conversation 
appears to have been so delightful that the greatest wits sat 
rapt and charmed to listen to him. No man bore poverty and 
narrow fortune with a more lofty cheerfulness. His letters to 
his friends at this period of his life, when he had lost his Gov- 
ernment pension and given up his college chances, are full of 
courage and a gay confidence and philosophy : and they are 
none the worse in my eyes, and I hope not in those of his last 
and greatest biographer (though Mr. Macaulay is bound to own 
and lament a certain weakness for wine, which the great and 
good Joseph Addison notoriously possessed, in common with 
countless gentlemen of his time), because some of the letters 
are written when his honest hand was shaking a little in the 
morning after libations to purple Lyseus over-night. He was 
fond of drinking the healths of his friends : he writes to Wyche,t 

* " It was my fate to be much with the wits ; my father was acquainted with all of 
them. Addison was the best company in the -world. I never knew anybody that had 
so much wit as Congreve.'' — Lady Wortley Montagu. Spence" s Anecdotes. 

t " Mr. Addison to Mr. Wcyhe. 

"Dear Sir, 

" My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so th( properest 
use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentlemen that set it a shaking. I have had 
this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, whicli I should 
certainly have done could 1 have found out a rhyme to rummer. But thougli you have 
escaped for y* present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my 
talent at crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible for 
me to express ye deep sense I have of ye many favors you have lately shown me. I 
shall only tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met with in 
my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, 1 dare 
say it will be thought a very good excuse when I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As 
your company made our stay at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye 
satisfaction that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking your 
health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long-lived as Methuselah, or, to 
use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc in ye cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs 
that was left a swelling behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can't 



42 o ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

of Hamburg, gratefully remembering Wyche's " hoc." " I have 
been drinking your health to-day with Sir Richard Shirley," 
he writes to Bathurst. " I have lately had the honor to meet 
my Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, where we have drunk Mr. 
Wood's health a hundred times in excellent champagne," he 
writes again. Swift* describes him over his cups, when Joseph 
yielded to a temptation which Jonathan resisted. Joseph was 
of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the fire of wine to warm 
his blood. If he was a parson, he -wore a tye-wig, recollect. A 
better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than 
Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine — 
why, we could scarcely have found a fault with him, and could 
not have liked him as we do.f 

At thirty-three years of age, this most distinguished wit, 
scholar, and gentleman was without a profession and an income. 
His book of " Travels " had failed : his " Dialogues on Medals " 
had had no particular success : his Latin verses, even though 
reported the best since Virgil or Statius at any rate, had not 

forbear troubling you with my hearty respects to y« owners of them, and desiring you 
to believe me always, 

" Dear Sir, 

" Yoiu-s,'' &c. 
" To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty's Resident at Hambourg, 

" May, 1703.'' 
. — From the Life of Addison, by Miss AlKlN. Vol. i. p. 146.' 

* " It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and Addison was, on 
the whole, satisfactory from first to last. The value of Swift's testimony, when noth- 
ing personal mflamed his vision or warped his judgment, can be doubted by nobody. 
" Sept. 10, 1710. — I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele. 
" II. — Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him part of 
this evening. 

" 18. — To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison's retirement near Chel- 
sea. * * * * I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison. 

" 27. — To-day all oiir company dined at Will Frankland's with Steele and Addi- 
son, too. 

"29. — I dined with Mr. Addison,'' &c. — Journal to Stella. 

Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his Travels " To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the 
most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age." — 
(Scott. From the information of Mr. Theophilus Swift.) 

" Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person ; and being 
my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of 
persons and things." — Letters. 

" I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you now, be- 
sides that great love and esteem 1 have always had for you. I have nothing to ask 
you either for my friend or for myself." — Swift to Addison (17 17). Scott's 
Swift. Vol. xix. p. 274. 

Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly communications. Time 
renewed them : and Tickell enjoyed Swift's friendship as a legacy from the man with 
whose memory his is so honorably connected. 

t " Addison usually studied all the morning ; then met his party at Button's ; 
dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of 
the company for about a year, but found it too much for me : it hurt my health, and so 
I quitted it." — Pope. Spence"! Anecdotes. 



CONG R EVE AND ADDISON. 



421 



brought him a Government place, and Addison was living up 
three shabby pair of stairs in the Haymarket (in a poverty over 
which old Samuel Johnson rather chuckles), when in these 
shabby rooms an emissary from Government and Fortune came 
and found him.* A poem was wanted about the Duke of Marl- 
borough's victory of Blenheim. Would Mr. Addison write 
one ? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton, took back the 
reply to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, that Mr. Addison 
would. When the poem had reached a certain stage, it was 
carried to Godolphin ; and the last lines which he read were 
these : — 

" But, O my Muse ! what numbers wilt thou find 
To sing tlie furious troops in battle join'd ? 
Methinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound 
The victor's sliouts and dying groans confound ; 
The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies, 
And all the thunder of the battle rise. 
'Twas then great Marlborough's might}' soul was proved, 
That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, 
Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, 
Examined all the dreadful scenes of war : 
In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, 
To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid. 
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, 
And taught tlie doubtful battle where to rage. 
So when an angel, by divine command, 
With rising tempest shakes a guilty land 
(Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed). 
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; 
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to jierform. 
Rides in the v^hirlwind and directs the storm.'' 

Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was pro- 
nounced to be of the greatest ever produced in poetry. That 
angel, that good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and landed 
him in the place of Commissioner of Appeals — vice Mr. Locke 
providentially promoted. In the following year Mr, Addison 
went to Hanover with Lord Halifax, and the year after was 
made Under Secretary of State. O angel visits ! you come 
" few and far between " to literary gentlemen's lodgings ! Your 
wings seldom quiver at second-floor windows now ! 

You laugh? You think it is in the power of few writers 
now-a-days to call up such an angel ? Well, perhaps not ; but 
permit us to comfort ourselves by pointing out that there are 
in the poem ©f the " Campaign " some as bad lines as heart 
can desire : and to hint that Mr, Addison did very wisely in 

* " When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of appearance which 
gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found his old 
patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation 
of his mind." — Johnson : Lives of the Poets. 



422 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



not going further with my Lord Godolphin tlian that angelical 
simile. Do allow me, just for a little harmless mischief, to 
read you some of- the lines which follow. Here is the interview 
between the Duke and the King of the Romans after the 
battle : — 

" Austria's young monarch, whose imperial sway 
Sceptres and thrones are destined to obey, 
Whose boasted ancestry so high extends 
That in tlie Pagan Gods his Imeage ends. 
Comes from afar, in gratitude to own 
The great supporter of Ids father's throne. 
What tides of glory to his bosom ran 
Clasped in tlr embraces of the godlike man ! 
How were his eves with pleasing wonder fixt. 
To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt ! 
Such easy greatness, sucli a graceful port, 
So turned and finished for the camp or court 1 " 

How many fourth-form boys at Mr. Addison's -school of 
Charterhouse could write as well as that now \ The " Cam- 
paign " has blunders, triumphant as it was ; and weak points 
like all campaigns.* 

In the year 1713 "Cato" came out. Swift has left a de- 
scription of the first night of the performance. All the laurels 
of Europe were scarcely sufficient for the author of this pro- 
digious poem.f Laudations of Whig and Tory chiefs, popular 

* " Mr. Addison wrote very fluently ; but he was sometimes very slow and scrupu- 
lous in correcting. He would show his verses to several friends ; and would alter 
almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident 
of himself ; and too much concerned about his character as a poet ; or (as he worded 
it) too solicitous for that kind of praise which, God knows, is but a very little matter 
after all ! ' — Pope. Sfeiicch Anecdotes. 

t "As to poetical affairs,'' says Pope, in 1713, " I am content at present to be a 
bare looker-on. * * * Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as 
he is of Britain in ours : and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to 
make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most 
properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion : 
" ' Envy itself is dumb — in wonder lost ; 

And factions strive who shall applaud him most.' 

" The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre 
were echoed back by the Tories on the other ; wliile the author sweated behind the 
scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than the 
head. * * * * I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the oppo- 
site faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, 
and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgment (as he expressed it) for de- 
fending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator." — Pope's Letters to 
Sir W. Trumbull. 

" Cato " ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote the Prologue 
and Garth the Epilogue. 

It is worth noticing how many things in " Cato '' keep their ground as habitual 
quotations, e. g. : — 

" * * * big with the fate • 
Of Cato and of Rome." 

'' 'Tis not in mortals to command success. 

But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.'' 



CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 423 

ovations, complimentary garlands from literary men, transla- 
tions in all languages, delight and homage from all — save from 
John Dennis in a minority of one. Mr. Addison was called the 
"great Mr. Addison" after this. The Coffee-house Senate 
saluted him Divus : it was heresy to question that decree. 

_ Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in 
the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He 
was appointed Secretary of State in 17 17. And letters of his 
are extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written 
to young Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him as " my 
dearest lord," and asks affectionately about his studies, and 
writes very prettily about nightingales and birds'-nests which 
he has found at Fulham for his lordship. Those nightingales 
were intended to warble in the ear of Lord Warwick's mamma. 
Addison married her ladyship in 17 16; and died at Holland 
House three years after that splendid but dismal union.* 

" Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury." 
" I think the Romans call it Stoicism.'' 
" My voice is still for war.'' 

" When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, 
The post of honour is a private station.'' 
Not to mention — 

" The woman who deliberates is lost.'' 

And the eternal — 

" Plato, thou reasonest well,'' 
which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play ! 

* " The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which 
a Turkish princess is espoused — to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, 
' Daughter, 1 give thee this man for thy slave.' The marriage, if uncontradicted report 
can be credited, made no addition to his happiness ; it neither found them, nor made 
them, equal. * * * Rovve's ballad of ' The Despairing Shepherd ' is said to have 
been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable pair." — Dr. John- 
son. 

" I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the 
less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. At that time 
he declined it, and 1 really believe thathe would have done well to have declined it now. 
Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, 
eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be heartily 
glad to resign them both.''— Lady Wortley Montagu to Pope: Works, Lord 
WhariicUffe' s edit., vol. ii. p. iii. 

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who inherited, on 
her mother's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her father had purchased. 
She was of weak intellect, and died, unmarried, at an advanced age. 

Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship, for his 
Collection contains " Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr. Addison's going to Ireland," 
in whicli her ladyship is called " Chloe," and Joseph Addison " Lycidas ; " besides 
the ballad mentioned by the Doctor, and which is entitled " Colin"s Complaint." 
But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the reader to 
peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a specimen : — 

" What though I have skill to complain — 

Though the Muses my temples have crowned ; 



424 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



But it is not for his reputation as the great author of " Cato " 
and the " Campaign," or for his merits as vSecretary of State, or 
for his rank and high distinction as my Lady Warvviclv's hus- 
band, or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions 
on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we 
admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a 
Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe 
as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. 
He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his 
noble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no 
unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated only in smiling. 
While Swift went about, hanging and ruthless — a literary 
Jeffreys — in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried : 
only peccadilloes and small sins against society : only a danger- 
ous libertinism in tuckers and hoops ;* or a nuisance in the 

What though, when they hear my soft strain, 
The virgins sit weeping around. 

" Ah, Colin ! thy hopes are in vain ; 
Thy pipe and thy laurel resign ; 
Thy false one inclines to a swain 
Whose music is sweeter than thine." 

* One of the most humorous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the Speciatof 
tells us, particularly pleased his friend Sir Roger : 
— " Mr. Spectator, — 

" You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the country; 
it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your with- 
drawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagances. Their petti- 
coats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into 
a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more ; in short, sir, since our 
women know themselves to be out of the eye of the Spectator, they will be kept 
within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their 
head-dresses ; for as the humor of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into 
another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only 
fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they 
make up in breadth, and contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations 
at the same time that they shorten the superstructure. 

" The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are airy and very 
proper for the season ; but this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, 
for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so 
that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather ; besides, I would 
fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling 
than their mothers before them ? 

" 1 find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years 
been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. 
It is most certain that a woman's honor cannot be better intrenched than after this 
manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks of lines and circum- 
vallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against 
the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Ether- 
idge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops. 

" Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers who 
look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that it portends 
the downfall of the French king, and observe, that the farthingale appeared in Eng- 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON: 425 

abuse of beaux' canes and snuff-boxes. It may be a lady is 
tried for breaking the peace of our sovereign lady Queen Anne, 
and ogling too dangerously from the side-box ; or a Templar 
for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian's head : or a citizen's 
wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too little for 
her husband and children : every one of the little sinners 
brought before him is amusing, and he dismisses each with 
the pleasantest penalties and the most charming words of 
admonition. 

Addison wrote his papers as gayly as if he was going out 
for a holiday. When Steele's "Tatler" first began his prattle, 
Addison, then in Ireland, caught at his friend's notion, poured 
in paper after paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, 
the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his 
daily observation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed 
an almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty years old : 
full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his 
brain, manuring hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cutting and 
sowing and cutting again, like other luckless cultivators of let- 
ters. He had not done much as yet ; a few Latin poems — ■ 
graceful prolusions ; a polite book of travels ; a dissertation on 
medals, not very deep ; four acts of 1 tragedy, a great classical 
exercise ; and the " Campaign," a large prize poem that won an 
enormous prize. But with his friend's discovery of the " Tatler," 
Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful talker in 
the world began to speak. He does not go very deep : let 
gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the 
plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he 
couldn't go very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his 
writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully 
selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. 
I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost 
his night's rest or his day's tranquillity about any woman in his 
life ;* whereas poor Dick Steele had capacity enough to melt, 
and to languish, and to sigh, and to cry his honest old eyes out, 
for a dozen. His writings do not show insight into or rever- 
ence for the love of women, which I take to be, one the conse- 
quence of the other. He walks about the world watching their 

land a little before the niin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion 
that it foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same prognostication as the 
tail of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think it is a sign that multitudes 
are coming into the world rather than going out of it," &c., &c. — Spectator, No. 127. 
* " Mr. Addison has not had one enithalamium that I can hear of, and must even 
be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his own." — Pope's 
Letters. 



426 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

pretty humors, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries ; and noting 
them with the most charming archness. He sees them in 
public, in the theatre, or the assembly, or the puppet-show ; or 
at the toy-shop higgling for gloves and lace ; or at the auction, 
battling together over a blue porcelain dragon or a darling 
monster in Japan ; or at church, eyeing the width of their rival's 
hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep down the 
aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the " Garter " in St. 
James's Street, at Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to the drawing- 
room with her coronet and six footmen ; and remembering that 
her father was a Turkey merchant in the city, calculates how 
many sponges went to purchase her earring, and how many 
drums of figs to build her coach-box ; or he demurely watches 
behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he knows 
under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir 
Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women, 
Addison was one of the most resolute club-men of his day. He 
passed many hours daily in those haunts. Besides drinking — 
which alas ! is past praying for — you must know it, he owned, 
too, ladies, that he indulged in that odious practice of smoking 
Poor fellow ! He was a man's man, remember. The only 
woman he did know, he didn't write about. I take it there 
would not have been much humor in that story. 

He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the "Grecian," 
or the " Devil ; " to pace 'Change and the Mall * — to mingle 

* "I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he 
knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposi- 
tion, married or a bachelor ; with other particulars of a like nature, that conduce very 
much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so 
natural to a reader, 1 design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my fol- 
lowing writings ; and shall give some account in them of the persons that are engaged 
in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to 
my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work witli my own history. * * * 
There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child o 
me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether 
this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my 
father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine ; for I am not so vain as to 
think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though 
that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my 
behavior at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that 1 sucked, 
seemed to favor my mother's dream ; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my 
rattle before 1 was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had 
taken away the bells from it. 

" As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall 
pass it over in silence. I find that during my nonage 1 had the reputation of a very 
sullen youth, but was always the favorite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that 
my parts %i<cre solid and mould -wear well. I had not been long at the university 
before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence ; for during the space of 
eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 



427 



In that great club of the world — sitting alone in it somehow : 
having good-will and kindness for every single man and woman 
in it — having need of some habit and custom binding him to 
some few ; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong 
to hint a little doubt about a man's parts, and to damn him 
with faint praise) ; and so he looks on the world and plays with 
the ceaseless humors of all of us — laughs the kindest laugh — 
points our neighbor's foible or eccentricity out to us with the 
most good-natured, smiling confidence ; and then, turning over 
his shoulder, whispers ^/<t foibles to our neighbor. What would 
Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and his charmmg 
little brain-cracks ? * If the good knight did not call out to 
the people sleeping in church, and say '' Amen " with such a 
delightful pomposity : if he did not make a speech in the assize- 
court a propos de botfcs, and merely to show his dignity to Mr. 
Spectator : f if he did not mistake Madam Doll Tearsheet for 

quantity of an hundred wwds ; and, indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke 
three sentences together in my whole life. ****** 

" I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most 
public places, though there are not more than half a dozen of my select friends that 
know me. * * * There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make 
my appearance ; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians 
at ' Will's,' and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in these 
little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at ' Child's,' and whilst I seem 
attentive to nothing but the Poshnan, overhear the conversation of every table in the 
room. I appear on Tuesday night at ' St. James's Coffee-house ; ' and sometimes join 
the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and im- 
prove. My face is likewise very well known at the ' Grecian,' the ' Cococa-tree,' and 
in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a 
merchant upon the Exchange for above these two years ; and sometimes pass for a 
Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at 'Jonathan's.' In short, wherever I see a 
cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club. 

" Thus I live in the world rather as a ' Spectator ' of mankind than as one of the 
species ; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, 
merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling in any practical part in life. I am 
very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in 
the economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who are engaged in 
them — as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the 
game. ***** In shoit, I have acted, in all the parts of my life, as a looker-on, 
which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper." — Spectator, No. i. 

* " So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently 
been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has 
always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark of a fool." — Macaul.w. 

t " The Court was sat before Sir Roger came ; but, notwithstanding all the 
justices had taken their places upon the bencli, they made room for the old knight at 
the head of them ; who for his reputation in the country took occasion to whisper in 
the judge's ear that Jie was f;lad his lordship had met with so innch good zvcatlier in 
his circuit. I was listening to the proceedings of the Court with much attention, and 
infinitely pleased with that great appearance and solemnity which so properly accom- 
panies such a public administration of our laws; when, after about an hour's sitting, 
I observed, to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was 
getting up to speak. I vifas in j^me pain for him, till I found he had acquitted him- 
self of two or three sentences, with a look of much business and great intrepidity. 

" Upon his first rising, the Court was hushed, and a general whisper ran among 



428 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

a lady of quality in Temple Garden : if he were wiser than he 
is : if he had not his humor to salt his life, and were but a mere 
English gentleman and game-preserver — of what worth were 
he to us ? We love him for his vanities as much as his virtues. 
What is ridiculous is delightful in him ; we are so fond of him 
because we laugh at him so. And out of that laughter, and 
out of that sweet weakness, and out of those harmless eccen' 
tricities and follies, and out of that touched brain, and out of 
that honest manhood and simplicity — we get a result of happi- 
ness, goodness, tenderness, pity, piety; such as, if my audience 
will think their reading and hearing over, doctors and divines 
but seldom have the fortune to inspire. And why not } Is the 
glory of Heaven to be sung only by gentlemen in black coats ? 
Must the truth be only expounded in gown and surplice, and 
out of those two vestments can nobody preach it ? Commend 
me to this dear preacher without orders — this parson in the 
tye-wig. When this man looks from the world, whose weak- 
nesses he described so benevolently, up to the Heaven which 
shines over us all, I can hardlv fancy a human face lighted up 
with a more serene rapture : a human intellect thrilling with a 
purer love and adoration than Joseph Addison's. Listen to 
him : from your childhood you have known the verses ; but 
who can hear their sacred music without love and awe ? — 

" Soon as the evening shades prevail, 
The moon takes up the vifondrous tale, 
And nightly to the listening earth 
Repeats the story of her birtli ; 
Whilst all the stars that round her bum, 
And all the planets in their turn, 
Confirm the tidings as they roll, 
And spread the truth from pole to pole. 
What though, in solemn silence, all 
Move round the dark terrestrial ball ; 
What thougli no real voice nor sound 
Amid their radiant orbs be found ; 
In reason's ear they all rejoice, 
And utter forth a glorious voice, 
Forever singing as they shine, 
The hand that made us is divine." 

It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. They 
shine out of a great deep calm. When he turns to Heaven, a 
Sabbath comes over that man's mind : and his face lights up 

the country people that Sir Roger luas up. The speech he made was so little to the 
purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an account of it, and I believe was 
not so much designed by the knight himself to inform the Court as to give him a 
figure in my eyes, and to keep up his credit in the country." — Spectator^ No. 122. 



STEELE, 



429 



from it with a glory of thanks and prayer. His sense of 
religion stirs through his whole being. In the fields, in the 
town : looking at the birds in the trees : at the children in the 
streets : in the morning or in the moonlight : over his books 
in his own room : in a happy party at a country merry-making 
or a town assembly, good-will and peace to God's creatures, 
and love and awe to Him who made them, fill his pure heart 
and shine from his kind face. If Swift's life was the most 
wretched, I think Addison's was one of the most enviable. A 
life prosperous and beautiful — a calm death — an immense fame 
and affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name.* 



STEELE. 

What do we look for in studying the history of a past age ? 
Is it to learn the political transactions and characters of the 
leading public men ? is it to make ourselves acquainted with 
the life and being of the time ? If we set out with the former 
grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has 
it entire ? What character of what great man is known to you ? 
You can but make guesses as to character more or less happy. 
In common life don't you often judge and misjudge a man's 
whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression ? The 
tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behavior — 
the cut of his hair or the tie of his neck-cloth may disfigure him 
in your eyes, or poison your good opinion ; or at the end of 
years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says something, 
reveals something which had previously been a secret, which 
alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been 
acting on quite a different motive to that which you fancied 

*" Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his death bed, 
to ask him whether the Christian religion was true." — Dr. Young. Spence's Anec- 
dotes. 

" I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an 
act, the former as an habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness 
fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth 
who are subject to the greatest depression of melancholy : on the contrary, cheerful- 
ness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladness, prevents us from 
falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks 
through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment ; cheerfulness keeps up a kind 
of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.'' — Addison : 
S/>eciator, No. 381. 



430 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

you knew. And if it is so with those you knew, how much 
more with those you don't know ? Say, for example, that I 
want to understand the character of the Duke of Marlborough. 
T read Swift's history of the times in which he took a part ; the 
shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the 
politics of the age — he hints to me that Marlborough was a 
coward, and even of doubtful military capacity : he speaks of 
Walpole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except 
to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which 
was to have ended in bringing" back the Pretender. Again, I 
read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the 
command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is 
called the best information ; and I get little or no insight into 
this secret motive which, I believe, influenced the whole of 
Marlborough's career, which caused his turnings and windings, 
his opportune fidelity and treason, stopped his army almost at 
Paris gate, and landed him finally on the Hanoverian side — the 
winning side : I get, I say, no truth, or only a portion of it, in 
the narrative of either writer, and believe that Coxe's portrait, 
or Swift's portrait, is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take 
this as a single instance, prepared to be as skeptical about any 
other, and say to the Muse of History, " O venerable daughter 
of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single statement you ever made 
since your ladyship was a Muse ! For all your grave airs and 
high pretensions, you are not a whit more trustworthy than 
some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look down. 
You bid me listen to a general's oration to his soldiers : Non- 
sense ! He no more made it than Turpin made his dying 
speech at Newgate. You pronounce a panegyric of a hero : I 
doubt it, and say you flatter outrageously You utter the con- 
demnation of a loose character : I doubt it, and think you are 
prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an 
autobiography: I doubt all autobiographies I ever read ; except 
those, perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers 
of his class. These have no object in setting themselves right 
with the public or their own consciences ; these have no motive 
for concealment or half-truths ; these call for no more confi- 
dence than I can cheerfully give, and do not force me to tax my 
credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I take up a volume of 
Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the Spectator, and say the fiction 
carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume 
which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious book I get 
the expression of the life of the time ; of the manners, of the 
movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules 



STEELE. 



431 



of society — the old times live again, and I travel in the old 
country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for 
me?" 

As we read in these delightful volumes of the Tatlcr and 
Spectator the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is 
revivified. The Maypole rises in the Strand again in London : 
the churches are thronged with daily worshippers ; the beaux 
are gathering in the coffee-houses ; the gentry are going to the 
Drawing-room ; the ladies are thronging to the toy-shops ; the 
chairmen are jostling in the streets ; the footmen are running 
with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre 
doors. In the country I see the young Squire riding to Eton 
with his servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of 
the family, to see him safe. To make that journey from the 
Squire's and back. Will is a week on horseback. The coach 
takes five days between London and Bath. The judges and 
the bar ride the circuit. If my lady comes to town in her post- 
chariot, her people carry pistols to fire a salute on Captain 
Macbeth if he should appear, and her couriers ride ahead to 
prepare apartments for her at the great caravancerais on the 
road ; Boniface receives her under the creaking sign of the 
" Bell " or the " Ram," and he and his chamberlains bow her 
up the great stair to the state-apartments, whilst her car- 
riage rumbles into the court-yard, where the " Exeter Fly" is 
housed that performs the journey in eight days, God willing, 
having achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its 
passengers for supper and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe 
in the kitchen, where the Captain's man — having hung up his 
master's half pike — is at his bacon and eggs, bragging of 
Ramillies and Malplaquet to the town's-folk, who have their 
club in the chimney-corner. The Captain is ogling the cham- 
bermaid in the wooden gallery, or bribing her to know who is 
the pretty young mistress that has come in the coach. The 
pack-horses are in the great stable, and the drivers and ostlers 
carousing in the tap. And in Mrs. Landlady's bar, over a glass 
of strong waters, sits a gentleman of military appearance, who 
travels with pistols, as all the rest of the world does, and has 
a rattling gray mare in the stables which will be saddled and 
away with its owner half an hour before the " Fly " sets out on 
its last day's flight. And some five miles on the road, as the 
" Exeter Fly " comes jingling and creaking onwards, it will 
suddenly be brought to a halt by a gentleman on a gray mare, 
with a black vizard on his face, who thrusts a long pistol into 
the coach window, and bids the company to hand out their 



♦32 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



purses. * * * It must have been no small pleasure even to 
sit in the great kitchen in those days, and see the tide of 
humankind pass by. We arrive at places now, but we travel 
no more. Addison talks jocularly of a difference of manner 
and costume being quite perceivable at Staines, where there 
passed a young fellow " with a very tolerable periwig," though, 
to be sure, his hat was out of fashion, and had a Ramillies cock. 
I would have liked to travel in those days (being of that class 
of travellers who are proverbially pretty easy coram latronibus) 
and have seen my friend with the gray mare and the black 
vizard. Alas ! there always came a day in the life of that 
warrior when it was the fashion to accompany him as he passed 
— without his black mask, and with a nosegay in his hand, 
accompanied by halberdiers and attended by the sheriff, — in a 
carriage without springs, and a clergyman jolting beside him, 
to a spot close by Cumberland Gate and the Marble Arch, 
where a stone still records that here Tyburn turnpike stood. 
What a change in a century ; in a few years ! Within a few 
yards of that gate the fields began : the fields of his exploits, 
behind the hedges of which he lurked and robbed. A great 
and wealthy city has grown over those meadows. Were a man 
brought to die there now, the windows would be closed and 
the inhabitants keep their houses in sickening horror. A 
hundred years back, people crowded to see that last act of a 
highwayman's life, and make jokes on it. Swift laughed at 
him, grimly advising him to provide a Holland shirt and white 
cap crowned with a crimson or black ribbon for his exit, to 
mount the cart cheerfully — shake hand with the hangman, and 
so — farewell. Gay wrote the most delightful ballads, and made 
merry over the same hero. Contrast these with the writings 
of our present humorists ! Compare those morals and ours 
— those manners and ours ! 

We can't tell — you would not bear to be told the whole 
truth regarding those men and manners. You could no more 
suffer in a British drawing-room, under the reign of Queen 
Victoria, a fine gentleman or fine lady of Queen Anne's time, 
or hear what they heard and said, than you would receive an 
ancient Briton. It is as one reads about savages, that one 
contemplates the wild ways, the barbarous feasts, the terrific 
pastimes, of the men of pleasure of that age. We have our' 
fine gentlemen, and our " fast men ;" permit me to give you 
an idea of one particularly fast nobleman of Queen Anne's 
days, whose biography has been preserved to us by the law 
reporters. 



STEELE. 



433 



In 1 69 1, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun 
was tried by his peers for tlie murder of William Mountford, 
comedian. In " Howell's State Trials," the reader will find 
not only an edifying account of this exceedingly fast nobleman, 
but of the times and manners of those days. My lord's friend, 
a Captain Hill, smitten with the charms of the beautiful Mrs. 
Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, deter- 
mined to carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney- 
coach with six horses, and a half-dozen of soldiers, to aid him 
in the storm. The coach with a pair of horses (the four leaders 
being in waiting elsewhere) took its station opposite my Lord 
Craven's house in Drury Lane, by which door Mrs. Bracegirdle 
was to pass on her way from the theatre. As she passed in 
company of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the Captain 
seized her by the hand, the soldiers hustled Mr. Page and at- 
tacked him sword in hand, and Captain Hill and his noble 
friend endeavored to force Madam Bracegirdle into the coach. 
Mr. Page called for help : the population of Drury Lane rose : 
it was impossible to effect the capture ; and bidding the 
soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off, 
Hill let go of his prey sulkily, and waited for other opportuni- 
ties of revenge. The man of whom he was most jealous was 
Will Mountford, the comedian; Will removed, he thought Mrs. 
Bracegirdle might be his : and accordingly the Captain and his 
lordship lay that night in wait for Will, and as he was coming 
out of a house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in 
talk, Hill, in the words of the Attorney-General, made a pass 
and ran him clean through the body. 

Sixty-one of my lord's peers finding him not guilty of mur- 
der, while but fourteen found him guilty, this very fast noble- 
man was discharged : and made his appearance seven years 
after in another trial for murder — when he, my Lord Warwick, 
and three gentlemen of the military profession, were concerned 
in the fight which ended in the death of Captain Coote. 

This jolly company were drinking together at " Lockit's " 
in Charing Cross, when angry words arose between Captain 
Coote and Captain French ; whom my Lord Mohun and my 
Lord the Earl of Warwick * and Holland endeavored to pacify 

* The husband of the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the father of the 
young Earl, who was brought to his stepfather's bed to see " how a Christian could 
die.'' He was amongst the wildest of the nobility of that day ; and in the curious 
collection of Chap-books- at the British Museum, I have seen more than one anecdote 
of the freaks of the gay lord. He was popular in London as such daring spirits 
have been in our time. The anecdotists speak very kindly of his practical jokes. 
Mohun was scarcely out of prison for his second homicide, when he went on Lord 

28 



434 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



My Lord Warwick was a dear friend of Captain Coote, lent him 
a hundred pounds to buy his commission in the Guards ; once 
when the captain was arrested for 13/. by his tailor, my lord 
lent him five guineas, often paid his reckoning for him, and 
showed him other offices of friendship. On this evening the 
disputants, French and Coote, being separated whilst they were 
up stairs, unluckily stopped to drink ale again at the bar of 
*' Lockit's." The row began afresh — Coote lunged at French 
over the bar, and at last all six called for chairs, and went to 
Leicester Fields, where they fell to. Their lordships engaged 
on the side of Captain Coote. My Lord of Warwick was 
severely wounded in the hand, Mr. French also was stabbed, 
but honest Captain Coote got a couple of wounds — one espe- 
cially, " a wound in the left side just under the short ribs, and 
piercing through the diaphragma," which did for Captain 
Coote. Hence the trials of my Lords Warwick and Mohun : 
hence the assemblage of peers, the report of the transaction, in 
which these defunct fast men still live for the observation of 
the curious. My Lord of Warwick is brought to the bar by the 
Deputy Governor of the Tower of London, having the axe car- 
ried before him by the gentleman jailer, who stood with it at 
the bar at the right hand of the prisoner, turning the edge from 
him ; the prisoner, at his approach, making three bows, one to 
his Grace the Lord High Steward, the other to the peers on 
each hand ; and his Grace and the peers return the salute. 
And besides these great personages, august in periwigs, and 
nodding to the right and left, a host of the small come up out 
of the past and pass before us — the jolly captains brawling in 
the tavern, and laughing and cursing over their cups — the 
drawer that serves, the bar-girl that waits, the bailiff on the 
prowl, the chairmen trudging though the black lampless streets, 
and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords are 
clashing in the garden within. " Help there ! a gentleman is 
hurt ! " The chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gentle- 
man over the railings, and carry him, ghastly and bleeding, to 
the Bagnio in Long Acre, where they knock up the surgeon — a 
pretty tall gentleman : but that wound under the short ribs has 
done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen, and 
gentleman jailer with your axe, where be you now? The gen- 

Macclesfield's embassy to the Elector of Hanover, when Queen Anne sent the garter 
to H. E. Highness. The chronicler of the expedition speaks of his lordship as an 
amiable young man, who had been in bad company, but was quite repentant and 
reformed. He and Macartney afterwards murdered the Duke of Hamilton between 
them, in which act Lord Mohun died. This amiable baron's name was Charles, and 
not Henry, as a recent novelist has christened him. 



STEELE. A-^ (J 

tleman axeman's head is off his own shoulders ; the lords and 
judges can wag theirs no longer ; the bailiff's writs have ceased 
to run ; the honest chairmen's pipes are put out, and with their 
brawny calves they have walked away into Hades — all as irre- 
coverably done for as Will Mountford or Captain Coote. The 
subject of our night's lecture saw all these people — rode in 
Captain Coote's company of the Guards very probably — wrote 
and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy in many a chair, 
after many a bottle, in many a tavern — fled from many a 
bailiff. 

In 1709, when the publication of the Tatler began, our 
great-great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and 
delightful paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light lit- 
erature in a later day exhibited when the Waverley novels 
■appeared, upon which the public rushed, forsaking that feeble 
entertainment of which the Miss Porters, the Anne of Swanseas, 
and worthy Mrs. Radcliffe herself, with her dreary castles and 
exploded old ghosts, had had pretty much the monopoly. I have 
looked over many of the comic books with which our ancestors 
amused themselves, from the novels of Swift's coadjutrix, Mrs. 
Manley, the delectable aathor of the " New Atlantis," to the 
facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned 
Ward, writer of the " London Spy " and several other volumes of 
ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and ordinaries, the wit of 
the Bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago of which 
these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collec- 
tion at the British Museum, you may see, besides, the Crafls- 
mefi and Postboy specimens, and queer specimens they are, of 
the higher literature of Queen Anne's time. Here is an ab- 
stract from a notable journal bearing date, Wednesday, Octo- 
ber 13th, 1708, and entitled 27u' B?-itish Apollo ; or, curious 
amusements for the ingenious, by a society of gentlemen.'^ The 
British Apollo invited and professed to answer questions upon 
all subjects of wit, morality, science, and even religion ; and 
two out of its four pages are filled with queries and replies 
much like some of the oracular penny prints of the present 
time. 

One of the first querists, referring to the passage that a 
bishop should be the husband of one wife, argues that polygamy 
is justifiable in the laity. The society of gentlemen conduct- 
ing the British Apollo are posed by this casuist, and promise to 
give him an answer. Celinda then wishes to know from "the 
gentlemen," concerning the souls of the dead, whether they shall 
have the satisfaction to know those whom they most valued in 



436 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

this transitory life. The gentlemen of the Apollo give but cold 
comfort to poor Celinda. They are inclined to think not : for, 
say they, since every inhabitant of those regions will be infi- 
nitely dearer than here are our nearest relatives — what have we 
to do with a partial friendship in that happy place? Pool 
Celinda ! it may have been a child or a lover whom she had 
lost, and was pining after, when the oracle of B?-itis/i Apollo 
gave her this dismal answer. She has solved the question for 
herself by this time, and knows quite as well as the society of 
gentlemen. 

From theology we come to physics, and Q. asks, " Why doe.* 
hot water freeze sooner than cold ? " Apollo replies, " Hot 
water cannot be said to freeze sooner than cold ; but water 
once heated and cold, may be subject to freeze by the evapora- 
tion of the spirituous parts of the water, which renders it less 
able to withstand the power of frosty weather." 

The next query is rather a delicate one. " You, Mr. Apollo, 
who are said to be the God of wisdom, pray give us the reason 
why kissing is so much in fashion : what benefit one receives 
by it, and who was the inventor, and you will oblige Corinna," 
To this queer demand the lips of Phoebus, smiling, answer : 
"Pretty innocent Corinna! Apollo owns that he was a little 
surprised by your kissing question, particularly at that part of 
it where you desire to know the benefit you receive by it. Ah ! 
madam, had you a lover, you would not come to Apollo for a 
solution ; since there is no dispute but the kisses of mutual 
lovers give infinite satisfaction. As to its invention, 'tis certain 
nature was its author, and it began with the first courtship." 

After a column more of questions, follow nearly two pages 
of poems, signed by Philander, Armenia, and the like, and 
chiefly on the tender passion ; and the paper wound up with a 
letter from Leghorn, an account of the Duke of Marlborough 
and Prince Eugene before Lille, and proposals for publishing 
two sheets on the present state of Ethiopia, by Mr. Hill : all 
of which is printed for the authors by J. Mayo, at the Printing 
Press against Water Lane in Fleet Street. What a change it 
must have been — how Apollo'' s oracles must have been struck 
dumb, when the Tatler appeared, and scholars, gentlemen, men 
of the world, men of genius, began to speak ! 

Shortly before the Boyne was fought, and young Swift had 
begun to make acquaintance with English court manners and 
English servitude, in Sir William Temple's family, another Irish 
youth was brought to learn his humanities at the old school of 
Charterhouse, near Smithfield; to which foundation he had 



STEELE. 



437 



been appointed by James Duke of Ormond, a governor of the 
House, and a patron of the lad's family. The boy was an or- 
phan, and described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos 
and simplicity, some of the earliest recollections of a life which 
was destined to be checkered by a strange variety of good and 
evil fortune. 

I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters 
and ushers of that thick-set, squared-faced, black-eyed, soft- 
hearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped 
deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good 
parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, 
and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to 
scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape the 
flogging-block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have my- 
self inspected, but only as an amateur, that instrument of 
righteous torture still existing, and in occasional use, in a seclu- 
ded private apartment of the old Charterhouse School ; and 
have no doubt it is the very counterpart, if not the ancient and 
interesting machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele submitted 
himself to the tormentors. 

Besides being very kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy 
went invariably into debt with the tart-woman ; ran out of 
bounds, and entered into pecuniary, or rather promissory, en- 
gagements with the neighboring lollipop-vendors and piemen — 
exhibited an early fondness and capacity for drinking mum and 
sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to 
lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements here made 
of Steele's early life ; but if the child is father of the man, the 
father of young Steele of Merton, who left Oxford without tak- 
ing a degree, and entered the Life Guards — the father of Cap- 
tain Steele of Lucas's Fusiliers, who got his company through 
the patronage of my Lord Cutts — the father of Mr. Steele the 
Commissioner of Stamps, the editor of the Gazette^ the Tatler^ 
and Spectator., the expelled Member of Parliament, and the au- 
thor of the " Tender Husband" and the " Conscious Lovers ; " 
if man and boy resembled each other, Dick Steele the school- 
boy must have been one of the most generous, good-for-nothing, 
amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb tupto, I 
beat, tuptofuai, I am whipped, in any school in Great Britain. 

Almost every gentleman who does me the honor to hear me 
will remember that the very greatest character which he has 
seen in the course of his life, and the person to whom he has 
looked up with the greatest wonder and reverence, was the head 
boy at his school. The schoolmaster himself hardly inspires 



438 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

such an awe. The head boy construes as well as the school- 
master himself. When he begins to speak the hall is hushed, 
and every little boy listens. He writes off copies of Latin 
verses as melodiously as Virgil. He is good-natured, and, his 
own masterpieces achieved, pours out other copies of verses 
for other boys with an astonishing ease and fluency ; the idle 
ones only trembling lest they should be discovered on giving in 
their exercices, and whipped because their poems were too 
good. I have seen great men in my time, but never such a 
great one as that head boy of my childhood ; we all thought he 
must be Prime Minister, and I was disappointed on meeting 
him in after-life to find he was no more than six feet high. 

Dick Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, contracted such an 
admiration in the years of his childhood, and retained it faith- 
fully through his life. Through the school and through the 
world, whithersoever his strange fortune led this erring, way- 
ward, affectionate creature, Joseph Addison was always his 
head boy. Addison wrote his exercises. Addison did his best 
-themes. He ran on Addison's messages : fagged for him and 
blacked his shoes : to be in Joe's company was Dick's greatest 
pleasure ; and he took a sermon or a caning from his monitor 
with the most boundless reverence, acquiescence, and affection.* 

Steele found Addison a stately college Don at Oxford, and 
himself did not make much figure at this place. He wrote a 
comedy, which, by the advice of a friend, the humble fellow 
burned there ; and some verses, which I dare say are as sublime 
as other gentlemen's composition at that age ; but being smitten 
with a sudden love for military glor}^ he threw up the cap and 
gown for the saddle and bridle, and rode privately in the Horse 
Guards, in the Duke of Ormond's troop — the second — and, 
probably, with the rest of the gentlemen of his troop, "all mounted 
on black horses with white feathers in their hats, and scarlet 
coats richly laced," marched by King William, in Hyde Park, 
in November, 1699, and a great show of the nobility, besides 
twenty thousand people, and above a thousand coaches. " The 
Guards had just got their new clothes," the Lofidott Post said : 
" they are extraordinary grand, and thought to be the finest 
body of horse in the world." But Steele could hardly have seen 
any actual service. He who wrote about himself, his mother, 

* " Steele had the greatest veneration for Addison, and used to show it, in all 
companies, in a particular manner. Addison, now and then, used to play a little 
upon him ; but he always took it well."— Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 

" Sir Richard Steele was the best-natured creature in the world : even in his worst 
state of health, he seemed to desire nothing but to please and be pleased." — Dr. 
YouNS. Spends AntedoUs, 



STEELE. 



439 



his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the wine he drank, 
would have told us of his battles if he had seen any. His old 
patron, Ormond, probably got him his cornetcy in the Guards, 
from which he was promoted to be a Captain in Lucas's Fusi' 
Hers, getting his company through the patronage of Lord Cutts, 
whose secretary he was, and to whom he dedicated his work 
called the " Christian Hero." As for Dick, whilst writing this 
ardent devotional work, he was deep in debt, in drink, and in 
all the follies of the town ; it is related that all the officers of 
Lucas's, and the gentlemen of the Guards, laughed at Dick.* 

* The gayety of his dramatic tone may be seen in this little scene between two 
brilliant sisters, from his comedy " The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode." Dick wrote 
this, he said, from " a necessity of enlivening his character," which, it seemed, the 
" Christian Hero " had a tendency to make too decorous, grave, and respectable in the 
eyes of readers of that pious piece. 

\Scene draws and discovers Lady Charlotte, reading at a table, — Lady Har- 
riet, flaying at a glass, to and fro, and vicu'itig herself^ 

" L. Ha. — Nay, good sister, you may as well talk to me [looking at herself as she 
Speaks~\ as sit staring at a book which I know you can't jttend. — Good Dr. Lucas 
may have writ there what he pleases, but there's no putting Francis, Lord Hardy, 
now Earl of Brumpton, out of your head, or making him absent from your eyes. Do 
but look on me, now, and deny it if you can. 

" L. Ch. — You are the maddest girl [sjniUng\. 

" L. Ha. — Look'ye, I knew you could not say it and forbear laughing [looking over 
Charlotte\ — Oh ! I see his name as plain as you do — F-r-a-n, Fran, — c-i-s, cis, Fran- 
cis, 'tis in every line of the book. 

" L. Ch. [rising^ — It's in vain, I see, to mind anything in such impertinent com- 
pany — but grantmg 'twere as you say, as to my Lord Hardy — 'tis more excusable to 
admire another than oneself. 

" L. Ha. — Xo, I think not, — yes, I grant you, than really to be vain of one's per 
son, but I don't admire myself — Pish ! I don't believe my eyes to have that softness. 
[Looking in the glass ^ They ain't so piercing: no, 'tis only stuff, the men will be 
talking. — Some people are such admirers of teeth — Lord, what signifies teeth ! 
[Showing her teeth.\ Avery blackamoor has as white a set of teeth as \. — No, 
sister, I don't admire myself, but I've a spirit of contradiction in me ; I don't know 
I'm in love with myself, only to rival the men. 

'' L. Ch. — Ay, but Mr. Campley will gain ground ev'n of that rival of his, your 
dear self. 

" L. Ha. — Oh, what have I done to you, that you sho\Jd name that insolent in- 
truder .^ A confident, opinionative fop. No, indeed, if I am, as a poetical lover of 
mine sighed and sung of both sexes, 

The public envy and the public care, 

I sha'n't be so easily catched — ^I thank him — I want but to be sure I should heartily 
torment him by banishing him, and then consider whether he should depart this life 
or not. 

" L. Ch. — Indeed, sister, to be serious with you, this vanity in your humor does 
not at all become you. 

" L. Ha. — -Vanity ! All the matter is, we gay people are more sincere than you 
wise folks : all your life's an art. — Speak j'our soul. — Look you there. — [Hauling her 
to the glass^ Are you not struck with a secret pleasure when you view that bloom in 
your look, that harmony in your shape, that promptitude in your mien ? 

" L. Ch. — Well, simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a little taken with 
myself, I know it a fault, and take pains to correct it. 

" L. Ha. — Pshaw 1 Pshaw ! Talk this musty tale to old Mrs. Fardingale, 'tis too 
goon for me to think at that rate. 



44? 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



And in truth a theologian in liquor is not a respectable object, 
and a hermit, though he may be out at elbows, must not be in 
debt to the tailor. Steele sa3^s of himself that he was always 
sinning and repenting. He beat his breast and cried most 
piteously when he did repent : but as soon as crying had made 
him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. In that charming paper 
in the Tailer, in which he records his father's death, his mother's 
griefs, his own most solemn and tender emotions, he says he is 
interrupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, " the same as is 
to be sold at Garraway's, next week ; " upon the receipt of 
which he sends for three friends, and they fall to instantly, 
" drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit to themselves, 
and not separating till two o'clock in the morning." 

His life was so. Jack the drawer was always interrupting 
it, bringing him a bottle from the " Rose," or inviting him over 
to a bout there with Sir Plume and I^r. Diver ; and Dick wiped 
his eyes, which were whimpering over his papers, took down his 
laced hat, put on his sword and wig, kissed his wife and children, 
told them a lie about pressing business, and went off to the 
" Rose " to the jolly fellows. 

While Mr. Addison was abroad, and after he came honys in 
rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in his shabb}^ lodg- 
ing in the Haymarket, young Captain Steele was cutting a much 
smarter figure than that of his classical friend of Charterhouse 
Cloister and Maudlin Walk. Could not some painter give an 
interview between the gallant captain of Lucas's, with his hat 
cocked, and his lace, and his face too, a trifle tarnished with 
drink, and that poet, that philosopher, pale, proud, and poor, 
his friend and monitor of schooldays, of all days .? How Dick 
must have bragged about his chances and his hopes, and the 
fine company he kept, and the charms of the reigning toasts 
and popular actrsBses, and the number of bottles that he and 
my lord and some other pretty fellows had cracked overnight 
at the " Devil," or the " Garter ! " Cannot one fancy Joseph 
Addison's calm smile and cold gray eyes following Dick for an 
instant, as he struts down the Mall, to dine with the Guard at 
St. James's, before he turns, with his sober pace and threadbare 

" L. Ch. — They that think it too soon to understand themselves will very soon find 
it too late. — But tell me honestly, don't you like Campley ? 

" L. Ha. — The fellow is not to be abhorred, if the forward thing did not think of 
getting me so easily.— Oh, I hate a heart I can't break when I please. — What makes 
the value of dear china, but that 'tis so brittle ? — were it not for that, you might as well 
have stone mugs in your closet." — The Funeral, Oct. 2d. 

" We knew the obligations the stage had to his writings [Steele's] ; there being 
scarcely a comedian of merit in our whole company whom liis Toilers liad not mads 
better by his recommendation of them." — Cibber. 



STEELE. 441 

suit, to walk back to his lodgings up the two pair of stairs ? 
Steele's name was clown for promotion, Dick always said him- 
self, in the glorious, pious, and immortal William's last table- 
book. Jonathan Swift's name had been written there by the 
same hand too. 

Our worthy friend, the author of the " Christian Hero," con- 
tinued to make no small figure about town by the use of his 
wits.* He was appointed Gazetteer : he wrote, in 1703, " The 
Tender Husband," his second play, in which there is some 
delightful farcical writing, and of which he fondly owned in after- 
life, and when Addison was no more, that there were " many 
applauded strokes " from Addison's beloved hand.t Is it not 
a pleasant partnership to remember.? Can't one fancy Steele 
full of spirits and youth, leaving his gay company to go to Ad- 
dison's lodging, where his friend sits in the shabby sitting-room, 
quite serene, and cheerful, and poor? In 1704, Steele came on 
the town with another comedy, and behold it was so moral and 
religious, as poor Dick insisted, — so dull the town thought, — ■ 
that the " Lying Lover " was damned. 

Addison's hour of success now came, and he was able to 
help our friend the " Christian Hero " in such a way, that, if 
there had been any chance of keeping that poor tipsy cham- 
pion upon his legs, his fortune was safe, and his competence 
assured. Steele procured the place of Commissioner of Stamps : 
he wrote so richly, so gracefully often, so kindly always, with 
such a pleasant wit and easy frankness, with such a gush of 
good spirits and good-humor, that his early papers may be 
compared to Addison's own, and are to be read, by a male 
reader at least, with quite an equal pleasure. $ 

* " There is not now in his sight that excellent man, whom Heaven made his 
friend and superior, to be at a certain place in pain for what he should say or do. I 
will go on in his further encouragement. The best woman that ever man had cannot 
nowlamentandpineathis neglect of himself." — Steele [of himself] : The Theatre. 
No. 12, Feb. 1719-20. 

t " The Funeral " supplies an admirable stroke of humor, — one which Sydney 
Smith has used as an illustration of the faculty in his Lectures. 

The undertaker is talking to his employes about their duty. 

Sable. — " Ha, you ! — A little more upon the dismal \formmg their countenances^ : 
this fellow has a good mortal look, — place him near the corpse : that wainscot-face 
must be o' top of the stairs ; that fellow's almost in a fright (that looks as if he were 
full of some strange misery) at the end of the hall. So — But Fll fix you all myself. 
Let's have no laughing now on any provocation. Look yonder, — that hale, well-looking 
puppy ! You ungrateful scoundrel, did not I pity you, take you out of a great man's 
service, and show you the pleasure of receiving wages ? — Did not I give yo2i ten, then 
fifteen, and twenty shillings a week to be sorrowful — and the 7tiore I give you 1 
think the gladder you are I " 

J " From my own Apartment, Nov. l5. 

" There are several persons who have many pleasures and entertainments in 
their possession, which they do not enjoy ; it is, therefore, a kind and good ofi&ce to 



442 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

After the Tatlerm. 171 1, the famous Spectator made its ap)- 
pearance, and this was followed at various- intervals, by many 
periodicals under the same editor — the Guardian — the English- 

acquaint them with their own happiness, and turn their attention to such instances of 
their good fortune as they are apt to overlook. Persons in the married state often 
want such a monitor ; and pine away their days by loolcing upon the same condition 
in anguish and murmuring, wliich carries with it, in the opinion of otliers, a compli- 
cation of all the pleasures of life, and a retreat from its inquietudes. 

" I am led into this thought by a visit I made to an old friend who was formerly 
my schoolfellow. He came to town last week, with his family, for the winter ; end 
yesterday morning sent me word his wife expected me to dinner. I am, as it were, 
at home at that house, and every member of it knows me for their well-wisher. I 
cannot, indeed, express the pleasure it is to be met by the children with so much 
joy as I am when I go thither. The boys and girls strive who shall come first, when 
they think it is I that am knocking at the door : and that child which loses the race 
to me runs back again to tell the father it is Mr. Bickerstaff. This day I was led in by 
a pretty girl that we all thought must have forgot me ; for the family has been out of 
town these two years. Her knowing me again was a mighty subject with us, and took 
up our discourse at the first entrance ; after which, they began to rally me upon a 
thousand little stories they heard in the country, about my marriage with one of my 
neighbor's daughters ; upon which, the gentleman, my friend, said, 'Nay; if Mr. 
Bickerstaff marries a child of any of his old companions, I hope mine shall have the 
preference : there is Mrs. Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow 
as the bast of them. But I know him too well ; he is so enamored with the very 
memory of those w'ho flourished in our youth, that he will not so much as look upon 
the modern beauties. I remember, old gentleman, how often you went home in a 
day to refresh your countenance and dress when Tcraminta reigned in your heart. 
As we came up in the coach, I repeated to my wife some of your verses on her.' 
With such reflections on little passages which happened long ago, we passed our 
time during a cheerful and elegant meal. After dinner his lady left the room, as did 
also the children. As soon as we were alone, he took me by the hand : ' Well, my 
good friend,' says he, ' I am heartily glad to see thee ; I was afraid you would never 
have seen all the company that dined with you to-day again. Do not you think the 
good woman of the house a little altered since you followed her from the playhouse 
to find out who she was for me ? ' I perceived a tear fall down his cheek as he spoke, 
which moved me not a little. But, to turn the discourse, I said, ' She is not, indeed, 
that creature she was when she returned me the letter 1 carried from you, and told 
me, " She hoped, as I was a gentleman, I would be employed no more to trouble her, 
who had never offended me ; but would be so much the gentleman's friend as to 
dissuade him from a pursuit which he could never succeed in.'' You may remember 
I thought her in earnest, and you were forced to employ your cousin Will, who made 
his sister get acquainted with her for you. You cannot expect her to be forever 
fifteen.' ' Fifteen ! ' replied my good friend. ' Ah ! you little understand — you, that 
have lived a bachelor — how great, how exquisite a pleasure there is in being really 
beloved ! It is impossible that tlie most beauteous face in nature should raise in me 
such pleasing ideas as when I look upon that excellent woman. That fading in her 
countenance is chiefly caused by her watching with me in my fever. This was 
followed by a fit of sickness, which had like to have carried me off last winter. I 
tell you, sincerely, I have so many obligations to her that I cannot, with any sort of 
moderation, think of her present state of health. But, as to what you say of fifteen, 
she gives me every day pleasure beyond what I ever knew in the possession of her 
beauty when I was in the vigor of youth. Every moment of her life brings me fresh 
instances of her complacency to my inclinations, and her prudence in regard to my 
fortune. Her face is to me much more beautiful than when I first saw it; there is 
no decay in any feature which I cannot trace from the very instant it was occasioned 
by some anxious concern for my welfare and interests. Thus, at the same time, 
methinks, the love I conceived towards her for what she was, is heightened by my 
gratitude for what she is. The love of a wife is as much above the idle passion 
commonly called by that name, as the loud laughter of buffoons is inferior to tho 



STEELE. 443 

fnan — the Lover, whose love was rather insipid — the Reader, 
of whom the public saw no more after his second appearance 
— the Theatre, under the pseudonym of Sir John Edgar, which 

ele;;ant mirth of gentlemen. Oh ! she is an inestimable jewel ! In her examination 
of her household affairs, she shows a certain fearfulness to find a fault, which makes 
her servants ob:y her like children ; and the meanest we have has an ingenious shame 
for an offence not always to be seen in cliildren in other families. I speak free! v'_ ta 
you, my old friend ; ever since her sickness, thmgs that gave me the quickest joy 
before turn now to a certain anxiety. As the children play in the next room, I know 
the poor things by their steps, and am considering what they must do should they 
lose tlieir mother in their tender years. The pleasure I used to take in telling my 
boys stories of battles, and asking my girl questions about the disposal of her baby, 
and the gossipping of it, is turned into inward reflection and melancholy.' 

" He would have gone on in this tender way, when the good lady entered, and, 
with an inexpressible sweetness m her countenance, told us ' she had been searching 
lier closet for something very good to treat such an old friend as I was.' Her 
husband's eyes sparkled with pleasure at the cheerfulness of her countenance ; and I 
saw all his fears vanish in an instant. The lady observing something in our looks 
which showed we had been more serious than ordinary, and seeing her husband 
receive her with great concern under a forced cheerfulness, immediately guessed at 
what we had been talking of ; and applying herself to me, said, with a smile, ' Mr. 
Bickerstaff, do not believe a word of what he tells you ; I shall still live to have you for 
my second, as I have often promised you, unless he takes more care of himself than he 
has done since his coming to town. You must know he tells me, that he finds London 
is a much more healthy place than the country ; for he sees several of his old 
acquaintances and schoolfellows are here — yoicng fellows -with fair, full-bottomed 
ferhv'igs. I could scarce keep him this morning from going out open-breasted.' 
My friend, who is always extremely delighted with her agreeable humor, made her 
sit down with us. She did it with that easiness which is peculiar to women of sense ; 
and to keep up the good-humor she had brought in with her, turned her raillery upon 
me. ' Mr. Bickerstaft, you remember you followed me one night from the play- 
house ; suppose you should carry me thither to-morrow night, and lead me in the 
front box.' This put us into a long field of discourse about the beauties who were 
the mothers to the present, and shined in the boxes twenty years ago. I told her, ' I 
was glad she had transferred so many of her charms, and I did not question but her 
eldest daughter was within half a year of being a toast.' 

" We were pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the young lady, 
when, on a sudden, we were alarmed with the noise of a drum, and immediately entered 
my little godson to give me a point of war. His mother, between laughing and 
chiding, would have him put out of the room ; but I would not part with him so. I 
found, upon conversation with him, though he was a little noisy in his mirth, that 
the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all the learning on the other 
side of eight years old. I perceived him a very great historian in ' yEsop's Fables ; ' 
but he frankly declared to me his mind, ' that he did not delight in that learning 
because he did not believe they were true;' for which reason I found he had very 
much turned his studies, for about a twelvemonth past, into the lives of Don Bellianis of 
Greece, Guy of Warwick, ' the Seven Champions,' and other historians of that age. 
I could not but observe the satisfaction the father took in the forwardness of his son, 
and that these diversions might turn to some profit. I found the boy had made 
remarks which might be of service to him during the course of his whole life. He 
would tell you the mismanagement of John Hickerthrift, find fault with the passionate 
temper of Bevis of Southampton, and loved St. George for being the champion of 
England ; and by this means liad his thoughts insensibly moulded into the notions of 
discretion, virtue, and honor. 1 was extolling his accomplishments, when his mother 
told me ' that the little girl who led me in this morning was, in her way, a better 
scholar than he. Betty,' said she, ' deals chiefly in fairies and sprights ; and some- 
times in a winter night will terrify the maids with her accounts, until they are a'fraid 
to go up to bed.' 

" 1 sat with them until it was very late, sometimes in merry, sometimes in serious 



444 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



Steele wrote while Governor of the Royal Company of Come- 
dians, to which post, and to that of Surveyor of the Royal 
Stables at Hampton Court, and to the Commission of the 
Peace for Middlesex, and to the honor of knighthood, Steele 
had been preferred soon after the accession of George I. ; 
whose cause honest Dick had nobly fought, through disgrace, 
and danger, against the most formidable enemies, against 
traitors and bullies, against Bolingbroke and Swift in the last 
reign. With the arrival of the King, that splendid conspiracy 
broke up ; and a golden opportunity came to Dick Steele, 
whose hand, alas, was too careless to gripe it. 

Steele married twice ; and outlived his places, his schemes, 
his wife, his income, his health, and almost everything but his 
kind heart. That ceased to trouble him in 1729, when he died, 
worn out and almost forgotten by his contemporaries, in Wales, 
where he had the remnant of a property. 

Posterity has been kinder to this amiable creature ; all 
women especially are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was 
the first of our writers who really seemed to admire and respect 
them. Congreve the Great, who alludes to the low estimation 
in which women were held in Elizabeth's time, as a reason why 
the women of Shakspeare make so small a figure in the poet's 
dialogues, though he can himself pay splendid comiDliments to 
women, yet looks on them as mere instruments of gallantry, and 
destined, like the most consummate fortifications, to fall, after 
a certain time, before the arts and bravery of the besieger, 
man. There is a letter of Swift's, entitled " Advice to a very 
Young Married Lady," which shows the Dean's opinion of the 
female society of his day, and that if he despised man he 
utterly scorned women too. No lady of our time could be 
treated by any man, were he ever so much a wit or Dean, in 
such a tone of insolent patronage and vulgar protection. In 
this performance. Swift hardly takes pains to hide his opinion 
that a woman is a fool : tells her to read books, as if reading 
was a novel accomplishment ; and informs her that " not one 
gentleman's daughter in a thousand has been brought to read 
or understand her own natural tongue." Addison laughs at 
women equally ; but, with the gentleness and politeness of his 

discourse, with this particular pleasure, which gives the only true relish to all con- 
versation, a sense that every one of us liked each other. I went home, considering 
the difierent conditions of a married life and that of a bachelor ; and I must confess 
it struck me with a secret concern, to reflect, that whenever I go off I shall leave no 
traces behind me. In this pensive mood I return to my family ; that is to say, to 
my maid, my dog, my cat, who only can be the better or worse for what happens to 
me." — The Tatler. 



STEELE. 



445 



nature, smiles at them and watches them, as if they were harm- 
less, half-witted, amusing, pretty creatures, only made to be 
men's jolaythings. It was Steele who first began to pay a manly 
homage to their goodness and understanding, as well as their 
tenderness and beauty.* In his comedies, the heroes do not 
rant and rave about the divine beauties of Gioriana or Statira, 
as the characters were made to do in the chivalry romances and 
the high-flown dramas just going out of vogue ; but Steele ad- 
mires women's virtue, acknowledges their sense, and adores 
their purity and beauty, with an ardor and strength wliich 
should win the good -will of all women to their hearty and re- 
spectful champion. It is this ardor, this respect, this manliness, 
which makes his comedies so pleasant and their heroes such 
fine gentlemen. He paid the finest compliment to a woman 
that perhaps ever was offered. Of one woman, whom Con- 
greve had also admired and celebrated, Steele says, that " to 
have loved her was a liberal education." " How often," he 
says, dedicating a volume to his wife, " how often has your ten- 
derness removed pain from my sick head, how often anguish 
from my afilicted heart ! If there are such beings as guardian 
angels, they are thus employed. I cannot believe one of them 
to be more good in inclination, or more charming in form than 
my wife." His breast seems to warm and his eyes to kindle 
when he meets with a good and beautiful woman, and it is with 
his heart as well as with his hat that he salutes her. About 
children, and all that relates to home, he is not less tender, and 
more than once speaks in apology of what he calls his softness. 
He would have been nothing without that delightful weakness. 
It is that which gives his works their worth and his style its 
charm. It, like his life, is full of faults and careless blunders ; 
and redeemed, like that, by his sweet and compassionate nature. 
We possess of poor Steele's wild and checkered life some 
of the most curious memoranda that ever were left of a man's 
biography.f Most men's letters, from Cicero down to Walpole 

*" As to the pursuits after affection and esteem, the fair sex are happy in this 
particular, that with them the one is much more nearly related to the other than in 
men. The love of a woman is inseparable from some esteem of her ; and as she is 
naturally the object of affection, the woman who has your esteem has also some 
degree of your love. A man that dotes on a woman for her beauty, will whisper his 
friend, ' Thn.t creature has a great deal of wit when you are well acquainted with hen' 
And if you examine the bottom of your esteem for a woman, you will find you have a 
greater opinion of her beauty than anybody else. As to us men, I design to pass 
most of my time with the facetious Harry Bickerstaff ; but William Bickerstaff, the 
most prudent man of our family, shall be my executor.'' — Tatler, No. 206. 

t The Correspondence of Steele passed after his death into the possession of his 
daughter Elizabeth, by his second wife, Miss Scurlock, of Carmarthenshire. She 
married the Hon. John, afterwards third Lord Trevor. At her death, part of the 



446 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

or down to the great men of our own time, if you will, are doc- 
tored compositions, and written with an eye suspicious towards 
posterity. That dedication of Steele's to his wife is an artifi- 

Jetters passed to Mr. Thomas, a grandson of a natural daughter of Steele's ; and part 
to Lady Trevor's next of kin, Mr. Scurlock. They were published by the learned 
Nichols — from whose later edition of them, in 1809, our specimens are quoted. 
Here we have him in his courtship — which was not a very long one : — 

" To Mrs. Scurlock. 
"Madam,- " ^«,-. 30, 1707. 

" I BEG pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced to write from a coffee- 
house, where I am attending about business. There is a dirty crowd of busy faces 
all around me, talking of money ; while all my ambition, all my wealth, is love ! Love 
which animates my heart, sweetens my humor, enlarges my soul, and affects every 
action of my life. It is to my lovely charmer I owe, that many noble ideas are con- 
tinually affixed to my words and actions ; it is the natural effect of that generous 
passion to create in the admirer some similitude of the object admired. Thus, my 
dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a companion. Look up, my fair one, 
to that Heaven which made thee such ; and join with me to implore its influence on 
our tender innocent hours, and beseech the Author of love to bless the rites he has 
ordained — and mingle with our happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and 
a resignation to His will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavor to 
please Him and each other. 

" I am forever your faithful servant, 

" Rich. Steele." 

Some few hours afterwards, apparently, Mistress Scurlock received the next one 
— obviously written later in the day ! — 
" Dear Lovely Mrs. Scurlock, — a ur ay igi \ 2^^.30,1707;. 

" I HAVE been in very good company, where your health, under the character of 
the woman I lo'^ed best, has been often dnmk ; so that I may say that I am dead 
drunk for your sake, which is more than I die for yon. 

" Rich. Steele.'' 

"To Mrs. Scurlock. 

" Madam, — ^ i / / 

" It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend business. As 
for me, all who speak to me find me out, and I must lock myself up, or other people 
will do it for me. 

" A gentleman asked me this morning, ' What news from Lisbon .' ' and I 
answered, ' She is exquisitely handsome.' Another desired to know ' when I had 
last been at Hampton Court ? ' I replied, ' It will be on Tuesday come sc'nnight.' 
Pr'ythee allow me at least to kiss your hand before that day, that my mind may be in 
some composure. O Love ! 

' A thousand torments dwell about thee, 
Yet who could live, to live without thee ? ' 

" Methinks I could write a volume to you ; but all the language on earth would 
fail m saying how much, and with what disinterested passion, 

" I am ever yours, 

" Rich. Steele." 

Two days after this, he is found expounding his circumstances and prospects to 
the young lady's mamma. He dates from '' Lord Sunderland's office, Whitehall ; " 
and states his clear income at 1,025/. per annum. " I promise myself,'' says he, 
" the pleasure of an industrious and virtuous life, in studying to do things agreeable 
to you.'' 

They were married, according to the most probable conjectures, about the 7th 



STEELE. 



447 



cial performance, possibly ; at least, it is written with that de- 
gree of artifice which an orator uses in arranging a statement 
for the House, or a poet employs in preparing a sentiment in 

September. There are traces of a tiff about the middle of the next month ; she 

being prudish and fidgety, as he was impassioned and reckless. Genera! progress, 

however, may be seen from the following notes. The " house in Bury Street, St. 

James's," was now taken. 

" To Mrs. Steele. 

,,-,„_ " Oct. i6, 1707 

" Dearest Being on Earth, — ' ' ' 

" Pardon me if you do not see me till eleven o'clock, having met a schoolfellow 

from India, by whom I am to be informed on things this night which expressly 

concern your obedient husband, 

" Rich. Steele." 

" To Mrs. Steele. 

" Eight o'clock, Fou7ttiiin Tavern, 

" My Dear, — Oct. 22, 1707. 

" I BEG of you not to be uneasy ; for I have done a great deal of business to-day 

very successfully, and wait an hour or two about my Gazette.'' 

,, ,. ,,. " Dec. 22, 1707. 

" My DEAR, DEAR WiFE, — ' ' ' 

"1 WRITE to let you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged to attend 
some business abroad, of which I shall give you an account (when 1 see you in the 
evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient husband.'' 

"Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, 
" Dear Prue, — y««. 3, 1707-8. 

-' I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, and inclose two guineas as 
earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your 
welfare, and will never be a moment careless more. 

" Your faithful husband," &c 

II T-v iTr " Jail. 14, 1707-8. 

" Dear Wife, — -^ ti / / 

" Mr. Edgecombe, Ned Ask, and Mr. Lumley have desired me to sit an hour 

with them at the ' George,' in Pall Mall, for which I desire your patience till twelve 

o'clock, and that you will go to bed,'' &c. 

« Dear Prue,- " ^''"-^'^ ^""' ^"^- 3- '7o8. 

" If the man who has my shoemaker's bill calls, let him be answered that I shall 
call on him as I come home. I stay here in order to get Jonson to discount a bill for 
me, and shall dine with him for that end. He is expected at home every minute. 
Your most humble, obedient servant,'' &c. 

,, _- „, " Tennis-court Coffee-house. May <.. 1708. 

"Dear Wife, — -^ 1 j 01 1 

" I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing to you ; in the meantime 

shall lie this night at a baker's, one Leg, over against the ' Devil Tavern,' at Charing 

Cross. I shall be able to confront the fools who wish me uneasy, and shall have the 

satisfaction to see thee cheerful and at ease. 

" If the printer's boy be at home, send him hither ; and let Mrs. Todd send by the 

boy my nightgown, slippers, and clean linen. You shall hear from me early in the 

mornmg," &c. 

Dozens of similar letters follow, with occasional guineas, little parcels of tea, or 
walnuts, &c. In 1709 the Tatler made its appearance. The following curious note 
dates April 7th, 1710 : — 

" I inclose to you [' Dear Prue '] a receipt for the saucepan and spoon, and a note 
of 23/. of Lewis's, which will make up the 50/. I promised for your ensuing occasion. 

" I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to the pleasure I hav» 



448 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

verse or for the stage. But there are some 400 letters of Dick 
Steele's to his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved accu- 
rately, and which could have been written but for her and her 
alone. They contain details of the business, pleasures, quar- 
rels, reconciliations of the pair ; they have all the genuineness 
of conversation; they are as artless as a child's prattle, and as 
confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some are written from the 
printing office, where he is waiting for the proof-sheets of his 
Gazette., or his Tatlcr ; some are written from the tavern, whence 
he promises to come to his wife " within a pint of wine," and 
where he has given a rendezvous to a friend, or a money-lender: 
some are composed in a high state of vinous excitement, when 
his head is flustered with Burgundy, and his heart abounds with 
amorous warmth for his darling Prue : some are under the in- 
fluence of the dismal headache and repentance next morning : 
some, alas, are from the lock-up house, where the lawyers have 
impounded him, and where he is waiting for bail. You trace 
many years of the poor fellow's career in these letters. In 
September, 1707, from which day she began to save the letters, 
he married the beautiful Mistress Scurlock. You have passion- 
ate protestations to the lady ; his respectful proposals to her 
mamma ; his private prayer to Heaven when the union so 
ardently desired was completed ; his fond professions of con- 
trition and promises of amendment, when, immediately after his 
marriage, there began to be just cause for the one and need for 
the other. 

Captain Steele took a house for his lady upon their mar- 
riage, " the third door from Germain Street, left hand of Berry 
Street," and the next year he presented his wife with a country 
house at Hampton. It appears she had a chariot and pair, and 
soinetimes four horses : he himself enjoyed a little horse for his 
own riding. He paid, or promised to pay, his barber fifty 
pounds a year, and always went abroad in a laced coat and a 
large black buckled periwig, that must have cost somebody 
fifty guineas. He was rather a well-to-do gentleman. Captain 
Steele, with the proceeds of his estates in Barbadoes (left to 
him by his first wife), his income as a writer of the Gazette^ and 

in your person and society. I only bes; of you to add to your other charms a fearful- 
ness to see a man that loves you in pain and uneasiness, to make nie as happy as it is 
possible to be in this life. Rising a little in a morning, and being disposed to a cheer- 
fulness * * * * would not be amiss. 

In another, he is found excusing his coming home, being " invited to supper to 
Mr. Boyle's.'' " Dear Prue," he says on this occasion, " do not send after me, for I 
shall be ridiculous." 



STEELE. 



449 



his office of gentleman waiter to his Royal Highness Prince 
George. His second wife brought him a fortune too. But it 
is melancholy to relate, that with these houses and chariots and 
horses and income, the Captain was constantly in want of 
money, for which his beloved bride was asking as constantly.. 
In the course of a few pages we begin to find the shoemaker 
calling for money, and some directions from the Captain, who 
has not thirty pounds to spare. He sends his wife, "the beau- 
tifullest object in the world," as he calls her, and evidently in. 
reply to applications of her own, which have gone the way of 
all waste paper, and lighted Dick's pipes, which were smoked 
a hundred and forty years ago — he sends his wife now a guinea, 
then a half-guinea, then a couple of guineas, then half a pound 
of tea ; and again no money and no tea at all, but a promise 
that his darling Prue shall have some in a day or two ; or a re- 
quest, perhaps, that she will send over his night-gown and 
shaving-plate to the temporary lodging where the nomadic 
Captain is lying, hidden from the bailiffs. Oh ! that a Chris- 
tian hero and late Captain in Lucas's should be afraid of a 
dirty sheriff's officer ! That the pink and pride of chivalry should 
turn pale before a writ ! It stands to record in poor Dick's 
own handwriting — the queer collection is preserved at the 
British Museum to this present day — that the rent of the nup- 
tial house in Jermyn Street, sacred to unutterable tenderness 
and Prue, and three doors from Bury Street, was not paid until 
after the landlord had put in an execution on Captain Steele's 
furniture. Addison sold the house and furniture at Hampton, 
and, after deducting the sum in which his incorrigible friend 
was indebted to him, handed over the residue of the proceeds 
of the sale to poor Dick, who wasn't in the least angry at Addi- 
son's summary proceeding, and I dare say was very glad of any 
sale or execution, the result of which was to give him a little 
ready money. Having a small house in Jermyn Street for 
which he couldn't pay, and a country house at Hampton on 
which he had borrowed money, nothing must content Captain 
Dick but the taking, in 17 12, a much finer, larger, and grander 
house in Bloomsbury Square ; where his unhappy landlord got 
no better satisfaction than his friend in St. James's, and where 
it is recorded that Dick, giving a grand entertainment, had a 
half-dozen queer-looking fellows in livery to wait upon his noble 
guests, and confessed that his servants were bailiffs to a man. 
" I fared like a distressed prince," the kindly prodigal writes, 
generously complimenting Addison for his assistance in the 
Tatlery — " I fared like a distressed prince, who calls in a power- 

29 



4 5 O ENGLISH HUM ORIS TS. 

ful neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary ; when 
I had once called him in, I could not subsist without depen- 
dence on him." Poor, needy Prince of Bloomsbury ! think of 
him in his palace, with his allies from Chancery Lane ominously 
guarding him. 

All sorts of stories are told indicative of his restlessness and 
his good-humor. One narrated by Dr. Hoadly is exceedingly 
characteristic ; it shows the life of the time : and our poor friend 
very weak, but very kind both in and out of his cups. 

" My father," says Dr. John Hoadly, the Bishop's son, 
" when Bishop of Bangor, was, by invitation, present at one of 
the Whig meetings, held at the ' Trumpet,' in Shire Lane, when 
Sir Richard, in his zeal, rather exposed himself, having the 
double duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the im- 
mortal memory of King William, it being the 4th November, as 
to drink his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose 
phlegmatic constitution was hardly warmed for society by that 
time. Steele was not fit for it. Two remarkable circumstances 
happened. John Sly, the hatter of facetious memory, was in 
the house ; and John, pretty mellow, took it into his head to 
come into the company on his knees, with a tankard of ale in 
his hand to drink off to the itmnortal tuemory, and to return in 
the same manner. Steele, sitting next my father, whispered 
him — Do laugh. It is humanity to laugh. Sir Richard, in the 
evening, being too much in the same condition, was put into a 
chair, and sent home. Nothing would serve him but being 
carried to the Bishop of Bangor's, late as it was. However, 
the chairman carried him home, and got him up stairs, when his 
great complaisance would wait on them down stairs, which he 
did, and then was got quietly to bed." * 

There is another amusing story which, I believe, that re- 
nowned collector, Mr. Joseph Miller, or his successors, have 
incorporated into their work. Sir Richard Steele, at a time 
when he was much occupied with theatrical affairs, built him- 
self a pretty private theatre, and, before it was opened to his 
friends and guests, was anxious to try whether the hall was well 
adapted for 'hearing. Accordingly he placed himself in the 
most remote part of the gallery, and begged the carpenter who 
had built the house to speak up from the stage. The man at 
first said that he was unaccustomed to public speaking, and did 
not know what to say to his honor ; but the good-natured knight 

* Of this famous Bishop, Steele wrote, — 

" Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, 
All faults he pardons, though he none commits." 



STEELE. 451 

called out to him to say whatever was uppermost ; and, after a 
moment, the carpenter began, in a voice perfectly audible : " Sir 
Richard Steele ! " he said, " for three months past me and my 
men has been a working in this theatre, and we've never seen 
the color of your honor's money : we will be very much obliged 
if you'll pay it directly, for until you do we won't drive in another 
nail." Sir Richard said that his friend's elocution was perfect, 
but that he didn't like his subject much. 

The great charm of Steele's writing is its naturalness. He 
wrote so quickly and carelessly, that he was forced to make the 
reader his confidant, and had not the time to deceive him. He 
had a small share of book-learning, but a vast acquaintance 
with the world. He had known men and taverns. He had 
lived with gownsmen, with troopers, with gentlemen ushers of 
the Court, with men and women of fashion ; with authors and 
wits, with the inmates of the sponging-houses, and with the 
frequenters of all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He 
was liked in all company because he liked it ; and you like to 
see his enjoyment as you like to see the glee of a boxful of 
children at the pantomime. He was not of those lonely ones 
of the earth whose greatness obliged them to be solitary ; on 
the contrary, he admired, I think, more than any man who ever 
wrote ; and full of hearty applause and sympathy, wins upon 
you by calling you to share his delight and good-humor. His 
laugh rings through the whole house. He must have been in- 
valuable ct a tragedy, and have cried as much as the most 
tender young lady in the boxes. He has a relish for beauty 
and goodness wherever he meets it. He admired Shakspeare 
affectionately, and more than any man of his time ; and, accord- 
ing to his generous expansive nature, called upon all his 
company to like what he liked himself. He did not damn with 
faint praise : he was in the world and of it ; and his enjoyment of 
life presents the strangest contrast to Swift's savage indignation 
and Addison's lonely serenity.* Permit me to read you a pas- 
sage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar humor : 

* Here we have some of his later letters :— 

" To Lady Steele. 
" Dear Prue " Hampton Court, Alarch 16, 1716-17. 

" If you have written anything to me which I should have received last 
night, I beg your pardon that I cannot answer till the next post. ***** Your 
son at the present writing is mighty well employed in tumbling on the floor of the room 
and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very 
full of play and spirit. He is also a very great scholar : he can read his primer ; and 
I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. 
We are very intimate friends and playfellows. He begins to be very ragged ; and J 



452 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



the subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. We 
have said that upon all the actions of man, the most trifling 
and the most solemn, the humorist takes upon himself to com- 
ment. All readers of our old masters know the terrible lines of 
Swift, in vi'hich he hints at his philosophy and describes the end 
of mankind : — * 

" Amazed, confused, its fate unknown, 
The world stood trembling at Jove's throne ; 
While each pale sinner hung his head, 
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said : 

'Offending race of human kind. 
By nature, reason, learning, blind ; 
You who through frailty stepped aside 
And you who never err'd through pride; 
You who in different sects were shamm'd 
And come to see each other damn'd ; 
(So some folk told you, but they knew 
No more of Jove's designs than you ;) 
The world's mad business now is o'er, 
And I resent your freaks no more ; 
/ to, such blockheads set my wit, 
1 damn such fools — go, go, you're bit ! ' " 

hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him with new clothes and frocks, or what Mrs. 
Evans and I shall think for his service." 

" To Lady Steele. 

[Undated.] 
" You tell me you want. a little flattery from me. I assure you I know no one who 
deserves so much commendation as yourself, and to whom saying the best things 
would be so little like flattery. The thing speaks for itself, considering you as a very 
handsome woman that loves retirement— one who does, not want wit, and yet is ex-. 
tremely sincere ; and so I could go through all the vices which attend the good qual- 
ities of otlier people, of which you are exempt. But, indeed, though you have every 
perfection, you have an extravagant fault, which alniost frustrates the good in you to 
me ; and that is, that you do not love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my re- 
quest, and to make me proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride I have that you 
are mine. * * * * 

" Your most affectionate,, obsequious husband, 

" Richard Steele. 
" A quarter of Molly's schooling is paid. The children are perfectly well." 

" To Lady Steele. 
My Dearest Prue, ''March 26, 1717. 

" I have received yours, wherein you give me the sensible affliction of tell- 
ing me enow ot the continual pain in your head. * * * * Wlien 1 lay in your place, 
and on your pillow, 1 assure you I fell into tears last night, to think that my charm- 
ing little insolent might be then awake and in pain ; and took it to be a sin to go to 
sleep. 

" For this tender passion towards you I must he contented that your Prueship 
will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher. * * * * '' 

At the time when the above later letters were written. Lady Steele was in Wales, 
looking after her estate there. Steele, about this time, was much occupied with a pro- 
ject for conveying fish alive, by which, as he coastantly assures Ins wife, he fi-mly be- 
lieved he should make his fortune. It did not succeed, however. 

Lady Steele died in December of the succeeding year. She lies buried in West- 
minster Abbey. 

* Lord Chesterfield sends these verses to Voltaire in a characteristic letter. 



STEELE. 



453 



Addison, speaking on the same theme, but with how different 
a voice, says, in his famous paper on Westminster Abbey {Spec- 
tator, No. 26) : — " For my own part, though I am always serious, 
I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore 
take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the 
same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When 
I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies 
within me ; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every in- 
ordinate desire goes out ; when I meet with the grief of parents 
on a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion ; when I see 
the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of 
grieving for those we must quickly follow," (I have owned 
that I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or that 
he indulged very inordinately in the " vanity of grieving.") 
"When," he goes on, "when I see kings lying by those who 
deposed them : when I consider rival wits placed side by side, 
or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and 
disputes, — I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little 
competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. And, when I 
read the several dates on the tombs of some that died yesterday 
and some 600 years ago, I consider that Great Day when we 
shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance to- 
gether." 

Our third humorist comes to speak upon the same subject. 
You will have observed in the previous extracts the character- 
istic humor of each writer — the subject and the contrast — the 
fact of Death, and the play of individual thought, by which each 
comments on it, and now hear the third writer — death, sorrow, 
and the grave being for the moment also his theme. " The 
first sense of sorrow I ever knew," Steele says in the Tatler, 
" was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not 
quite five years of age : but w-as rather amazed at what all the 
house meant, than possessed of a real understanding why no- 
body would play with us. I remember I went into the room 
where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I 
had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and 
calling papa ; for, I know not how, I had some idea that he 
was locked up there. My mother caught me in her arms, and, 
transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was be- 
fore in, she almost smothered me in her embraces, and told me 
in a flood of tears, ' Papa could not hear me, and would play 
with me no more : for they were going to put him under ground, 
whence he would never come to us again.' She was a very 
beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in 



454 



FNGLISH HUMORISTS. 



her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which me- 
thought struck me with an instinct of sorrow that, before I ^\•as 
sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has 
made pity the weakness of my heart ever since." 

Can there be three more characteristic moods of minds and 
men ? " Fools, do you know anything of this mystery ? " says 
Swift, stamping on a grave, and carrying his scorn for mankind 
actually beyond it. " Miserable, purblind wretches, how dare 
you to pretend to comprehend the Inscrutable, and how can 
your dim eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder bound- 
less heaven ? " Addison, in a much kinder language and 
gentler voice, utters much the same sentiment : and speaks of 
the rivalry of wits, and the contests of holy men, with the same 
skeptic placidity. " Look what a little vain dust we are," he 
says, smiling over the tombstones ; and catching, as is his wont, 
quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks, in 
words of inspiration almost, of " the Great Day, when we shall 
all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance to- 
gether." 

The third, whose theme is Death, too, and who will speak 
his word of moral as Heaven teaches him, leads you ujd to his 
father's coffin, and shews you his beautiful mother weeping, 
and himself an unconscious little boy wondering at her side. 
His own natural tears flow as he takes your hand and con- 
fidingly asks your sympathy. " See how good and innocent 
and beautiful women are," he says ; "how tender little children ! 
Let us love these and one another, brother — God knows we 
have need of love and pardon." So it is each man looks with 
his own eyes, speaks with his own voice, and prays his own 
prayer. 

When Steele asks your sympathy for the actors in that 
charming scene of Love and Grief and Death, who can refuse 
it .'* One yields to it as to the frank advance of a child, or to 
the appeal of a woman. A man is seldom more manly than 
when he is what you call unmanned — the source of his emotion 
is championship, pity, and courage ; the instinctive desire to 
cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those 
who are tender and weak. If Steele is not our friend he is 
nothing. He is by no means the most brilliant of wits nor the 
deepest of thinkers : but he is our friend : we love him, as 
children love their love with an A, because he is amiable. Who 
likes a man best because he is the cleverest or the wisest of 
mankind ; or a woman because she is the most virtuous, or talks 
French, or plays the piano better than the rest of her sex ? I 



STEELE. 



45 S 



own to liking Dick Steele the man, and Dick Steele the author, 
much better than much better men and much better authors. 

The misfortune regarding Steele is, that most part of the 
company here present must take his amiability upon hearsay, 
and certainly can't make his intimate acquaintance. Not that 
Steele was worse than his time ; on the contrary, a far better, 
truer, and higher-hearted man than most who lived in it. But 
things were done in that society, and names were named, which 
would make you shudder now. What would be the sensation 
of a polite youth of the present day, if at a ball he saw the 
young object of his affections taking a box out of her pocket 
and a pinch of snuff : or if at dinner, by the charmer's side, she 
deliberately put her knife into her mouth .'' If she cut her 
mother's throat with it, mamma would scarcely be more shocked 
I allude to these peculiarities of by-gone times as an excuse for 
my favorite, Steele, who was not worse, and often much more 
delicate than his neighbors. 

There exists a curious document descriptive of the manners 
of the last age, which describes most minutely the amusements 
and occupations of persons of fashion in London at the time of 
which we are speaking ; the time of Swift, and Addison, and 
Steele. 

When Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and Colonel Alwit, 
the immortal personages of Swift's polite conversation, came to 
breakfast with my Lady Smart, at eleven o'clock in the morn- 
ing, my Lord Smart was absent at the leve'e. His lordship was 
at home to dinner at three o'clock to receive his guests ; and 
we may sit down to this meal, like the Barmecide's, and see the 
fops of the last century before us. Seven of them sat down at 
dinner, and were joined by a country baronet who told them 
they kept court hours. These persons of fashion began their 
dinner with a sirloin of beef, fish, a shoulder of veal, and a 
tongue. My Lady Smart carved the sirloin, my Lady Answer- 
all helped the fish, and the gallant Colonel cut the shoulder of 
veal. All made a considerable inroad on the sirloin and the 
shoulder of veal with the exception of Sir John, who had no 
appetite, having already partaken of a beefsteak and two mugs 
of ale, besides a tankard of March beer as soon as he got out 
of bed. They drank claret, which the master of the house said 
should always be drunk after fish ; and my Lord Smart particu- 
larly recommended some excellent cider to my Lord Sparkish, 
which occasioned some brilliant remarks from that nobleman. 
When the host called for wine, he nodded to one or other of 
his guests, and said, " Tom Neverout, my service to you." 



456 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

After the first course came almond-pudding, fritters, which 
the Colonel took with his hands out of the dish, in order to 
help the brilliant Miss Notable ; chickens, black puddings, and 
soup ; and Lady Smart, the elegant mistress of the mansion, 
finding a skewer in a dish, placed it in her plate with directions 
that it should be carried down to the cook and dressed for the 
cook's own dinner. Wine and small beer were drunk during 
this second course ; and when the Colonel called for beer, he 
called the butler Friend, and asked whether the beer was good. 
Various jocular remarks passed from the gentlefolks to the 
servants ; at breakfast several persons had a word and a joke 
for Mrs. Betty, my lady's maid, who warmed the cream and had 
charge of the canister (the tea cost thirty shillings a pound in 
those days). When my Lady Sparkish sent her footman out to 
my Lady Match to come at six o'clock and play at quadrille, 
her ladyship warned the man to follow his nose, and if he fell 
by the way not to stay to get up again. And when the gentle- 
men asked the hall-porter if his lady was at home, that func- 
tionary replied, with manly waggishness, " She was at home 
just now, but she's not gone out yet," 

After the puddings, sweet and black, the fritters and soup, 
came the third course, of which the chief dish was a hot vension 
pasty, which was put before Lord Smart, and carved by that 
nobleman. Besides the pasty, there was a hare, a rabbit, some 
pigeons, partridges, a goose, and a ham. Beer and wine were 
freely imbibed during this course, the gentlemen always pledging 
somebody with every glass which they drank : and by this time 
the conversation between Tom Neverout and Miss Notable had 
grown so brisk and lively, that the Derbyshire baronet began to 
think the young gentlewoman was Tom's sweetheart ; on which 
Miss remarked, that she loved Tom " like pie." After the goose, 
some of the gentlemen took a dram of brandy, " which was 
ver}^ good for the wholesomes," Sir John said ; and now having 
had a tolerably substantial dinner, honest Lord Smart bade the 
butler bring up the great tankard full of October to Sir John. 
The great tankard was passed from hand to hand and mouth to 
mouth, but when pressed by the noble host upon the gallant 
Tom Neverout, he said, " No, faith, my lord ; I like your wine, 
and won't put a churl upon a gentleman. Your honor's claret 
is good enough for me." And so, the dinner over, the host 
said, " Hang saving, bring us up a ha'porth of cheese." 

The cloth was now taken away, and a bottle of burgundy 
was set down, of which the ladies were invited to partake before 
they went to their tea. When they withdrew, the gentlemen 



STEELE. 



457 



promised to join them in an hour : fresh bottles were brought ; 
the " dead men," meaning the empty bottles, removed ; and 
" D'you hear, John ? bring clean glasses," my Lord Smart said. 
On which the gallant Colonel Alwit said, " I'll keep my glass ; 
for wine is the best liquor to wash glasses in." 

After an hour the gentlemen joined the ladies, and then 
they all sat and played quadrille until three o'clock in the 
morning, when the chairs and the flambeaux came, and this 
noble company went to bed. 

Such were manners six or seven score years ago. I draw 
no inference from this queer picture — let all moralists here 
present deduce their own. Fancy the moral condition of that 
society in which a lady of fashion joked with a footman, and 
carved a sirloin, and provided besides a great shoulder of veal, 
a goose, hare, rabbit, chickens, partridges, black puddings, and 
a ham for a dinner for eight Christians. What — what could 
have been the condition of that polite world in which people 
openly ate goose after almond-pudding, and took their soup in 
the middle of dinner.? Fancy a Colonel in the Guards putting 
his hand into a dish of beignets d'abricot, and helping his neigh- 
bor, a young lady du monde ! Fancy a noble lord calling out 
to the servants, before the ladies at his table, " Hang expense, 
bring us a ha'porth of cheese ! " Such were the ladies of Saint 
James's — such were the frequenters of " White's Chocolate- 
House," when Swift used to visit it, and Steele described it as 
the centre of pleasure, gallantry, and entertainment, a hundred 
and forty years ago ! 

Dennis, who ran amuck at the literary society of this day, 
falls foul of poor Steele, and thus depicts him : — " Sir John 

Edgar, of the county in Ireland, is of a middle stature, 

broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture of some- 
body over a farmer's chimney — a short chin, a short nose, a 
short forehead, a broad flat face, and a dusky countenance. 
Yet with such a face and such a shape, he discovered at sixty 
that he took himself for a beauty, and appeared to be more 
mortified at being told that he was ugly, than he was by any 
reflection made upon his honor or understanding. 

" He is a gentleman born, witness himself, of very honor- 
able family ; certainly of a very ancient one, for his ancestors 
flourished in Tipperary long before the English ever set foot in 
Ireland. He has testimony of this more authentic than the 
Herald's Office, or any human testimony. For God has 
marked him more abundantly than he did Cain, and stamped 
his native country on his face, his understanding, his writings, 



45 8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

his actions, his passions, and, above all, his vanity. The 
Hibernian brogue is still upon all these, though long habit and 
length of cla)^s have worn it off his tongue." * 

Although this portrait is the work of a man who was neither 
the friend of Steele nor of any other man alive, yet there is a 
dreadful resemblance to the original in the savage and exag- 
gerated traits of the caricature, and everybody who knows him 
must recognize Dick Steele. Dick set about almost all the 
undertakings of his life with inadequate means, and, as he 
took and furnished a house with the most generous intentions 
towards his friends, the most tender gallantry towards his wife, 
and with his only drawback, that he had not wherewithal to pay 
the rent when quarter-day came, — so, in his life he proposed to 
himself the most magnificent schemes of virtue, forbearance, 
public and private good, and the advancement of his own and 
the national religion ; but when he had to pay for these articles 
— so difficult to purchase and so costly to maintain — poor 
Dick's money was not forthcoming : and when Virtue called 
with her little bill, Dick made a shuffling excuse that he could 
not see her that morning, having a headache from being tipsy 
overnight ; or when stern Duty rapped at the door with his ac- 
count, Dick was absent and not ready to pay. He was shirk- 

* Steele replied to Dennis in an " Answer to a Whimsical Pamphlet, called the 
Character of Sir John Edgar." What Steele had to say against the cross-grained old 
Critic discovers a great deal of humor : — 

" Thou never didst let the sun into thy garret, for fear he should bring a bailiff 
along with him. » * * * 

" Your years are about sixty-five, an ugly, vinegar face, that if you had any com- 
mand you would be obeyed out of fear, from your ill-nature pictured there ; not from 
any other motive. Your heiglit is about some five feet five inches. You see I can 
give your e.xact measure as well as if I had taken your dimension with a good cudgel, 
which I promise you to do as soon as ever I have the good fortune to meet you. * * * 

" Your doughty paunch stands before you like a firkin of butter, and your duck 
legs seem to be cast for carrying burdens. 

" Thy works are libels upon others, and satires upon thyself ; and while they bark 
at men of sense, call him knave and fool that wrote them. Thou hast a great anti- 
pathy to thy own species ; and hates the sight of a fool but in thy glass.'' 

Steele had been kind to Dennis, and once got arrested on account of a pecuniary 
service which he did him. When John heard of the fact — " S'death ! '' cries John ; 
" why did not he keep out of the way as I did ? '' 

The " Answer " concludes by mentioning that Cibber had offered Ten Pounds for 
the discovery of the authorship of Dennis's pamphlet ; on which, says Steele, — " lam» 
only sorry he has offered so much, because "iXM twentieth part would have over-valued 
his whole carcase. But I know the fellow that he keeps to give answers to his cred- 
itors will betray him ; for he gave me his word to bring officers on top of the house 
that should make a hole through the ceiling of his garret, and so bring him to the pun- 
ishment he deserves. Some people think this expedient out of the way, and that he 
would make his escape upon hearing the least noise. I say so too ; but it takes him 
up lialf an hour every night to fortify himself with his old hair trunk, two or three 
joint-stools, and some other lumber, which lie ties together with cords so fast that it 
takes him up the same time in the morning to release himself." 



STEELE, 4. C Q 

mg at the tavern ; or had some particular business (of some- 
body's else) at the ordinary; or he was in hiding, or worse than 
in hiding, in the lock-up house. What a situation for a man ! 
— for a philanthropist — for a lover of right and truth — for a 
magnificent designer and schemer ! Not to dare to look in the 
face the Religion which he adored and which he had offended : 
to have to shirk down back lanes and alleys, so as to avoid the 
friend whom he loved and who had trusted him ; to have the 
house which he had intended for his wife, whom he loved pas- 
sionately, and for her ladyship's company which he wished to 
entertain splendidly, in the possession of a bailiff's man ; with 
a crowd of little creditors, — grocers, butchers, and small-coal 
men — lingering round the door with their bills and jeering at 
him. Alas ! for poor Dick Steele ! For nobody else, of course. 
There is no man or woman in our time who makes fine projects 
and gives them up from idleness or want of means. When 
Duty calls upon us^ we no doubt are always at home and ready 
to pay that grim tax-gatherer. When we are stricken with re- 
morse and promise reform, we keep our promise, and are never 
angry, or idle, or extravagant any more. There are no cham- 
bers in our hearts, destined for family friends and affections, 
and now occupied by some Sin's emissary and bailiff in p6sses- 
sion. There are no little sins, shabby peccadilloes, importu- 
nate remembrances, or disappointed holders of our promises to 
reform, hovering at our steps, or knocking at our door ! Of 
course not. We are living in the nineteenth century ; and 
poor Dick Steele stumbled and got up again, and got into jail 
and out again, and sinned and repented, and loved and suffered, 
and lived and died, scores of years ago. Peace be with him ! 
Let us think gently of one who was so gentle : let us speak 
kindly of one whose own breast exuberated with human kind' 
ness. 



46o ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 

Matthew Prior was one of those famous and lucky wits of 
the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, whose name it behoves us 
not to pass over. Mat was a world-philosopher of no small 
genius, good nature, and acumen.* He loved, he drank, he 
sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics, " in a little 
Dutch chaise on a Saturday night ; on his left hand his Horace, 
and a friend on his right," going out of town from the Hague to 
pass that evening, and the ensuing Sunday, boozing at a Spiel- 
haus with his companions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a 
Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain and with a grace not 
unworthy of his Epicurean master, the charms of his idleness, 
his retreat, and his Batavian Chloe. A vintner's son in White- 
hall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the Rod, Prior at- 
tracted some notice by writing verses at St. John's College, 

* Gay calls him — " Dear Prior * * * * beloved by every muse.'' — Mr. Pope's 
We/co»ic from Greece. 

Swift and Prior were very intimate, and he is frequently mentioned in the 
" Journal to Stella.'' " Mr. Prior," says Swift, " walks to make himself fat, and I to 
keep myself down. * * * * VVe often walk round the park together.'' 

In Swift's works there is a curious tract called " Remarks on the Characters of 
the Court of Queen Anne " [Scott's edition, vol. xii.] The " Remarks " are not by 
the Dean ; but at the end of eacli is an addition in italics from his hand, and these are 
always characteristic. Thus, to the Duke of Marlborough, he :tdds, " Detestably 
covetous^' &c. Prior is thus noticed — 

" Matthew Prior, Esq., Commissioner of Trade. 
" On the Queen's accession to the throne, he was continued in his office ; is very 
well at court with the ministry, and is an entire creature of my Lord Jersey's, whom 
he supports by his advice ; is one of the best poets in England, but very facetious in 
conversation. A thin, hollow-looking man, turned of forty years old. This is neat 
the truth, ^^ 

" Yet counting as far as to fifty his years. 

His virtues and vices were as other men's are. 
High hopes he conceived and he smothered great fears, 
In a life party-coloured — half pleasure, half care. 

" Not to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave. 
He strove to make interest and freedom agree ; 
In public employments industrious and grave, 

And alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he! 

" Now in equipage stately, now humble on foot, 

Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust ; 
And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about 

He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust." 

Prior's Poems. [For my own monument.'] 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 461 

Cambridge, and, coming up to town, aided Montague * in an 
attack on the noble old English lion John Dryden ; in ridicule 
of whose work, " The Hind and the Panther," he brought out 
that remarkable and famous burlesque, " The Town and 
Country Mouse." Aren't you all acquainted with it ? Have 
you not all got it by heart ? What ! have you never heard of it ? 
see what fame is made of ! The wonderful part of the satire 
was, that, as a natural consequence of " The Town and Country 
Mouse," Matthew Prior was made Secretary of Embassy at the 
Hague ! I believe it is dancing, rather than singing, which 
distinguishes the young English diplomatists of the present 
day ; and have seen them in various parts perform that part of 
their duty very finely. In Prior's time it appears a different 
accomplishment led to preferment. Could you write a copy of 
Alcaics ? that was the question. Could you turn out a neat 
epigram or two ? Could you compose " The Town and Country 
Mouse ? " It is manifest that, by the possession of this faculty, 
the most difficult treaties, the laws of foreign nations, and the 
interests of our own, are easily understood. Prior rose in the 
diplomatic service, and said good things that proved his sense 
and his spirit. When the apartments at Versailles were shown 
to him, with the victories of Louis XIV. painted on the walls, 
and Prior was asked whether the palace of the King of England 
had any such decorations, " The monuments of my master's 
actions," Mat said, of William whom he cordially revered, " are 
to be seen everywhere except in his own house." Bravo, Mat ! 
Prior rose to be full ambassador at Paris,! where he somehow 
was cheated out of his ambassadorial plate ; and in an heroic 
poem, addressed by him to her late lamented Majesty, Queen 
Anne, Mat makes some magnificent allusions to these dishes 
and spoons, of which Fate had deprived him. All that he 

* " They joined to produce a parody, entitled the 'Town and Country Mouse,' 
part of which Mr. Bayes is supposed to gratify his old friends, Smart and Johnson, 
by repeating to them. The piece is therefore founded upon the twice-told jest of the 
'Rehearsal.' * * * There is nothing new or original in the idea. * * * In this 
piece, Prior, though the younger man, seems to have had by far the largest share." — 
Scott's Dryden, vol. i. p. 330. 

t " He was to have been in the same commission with the Duke of Shrewsbury, 
but that that nobleman,"' says Johnson, " refused to be associated with one so meanly 
born. Prior therefore continued to act without a title till the Duke's return next year 
to England, and then he assumed the style and dignity of ambassador." 

He had been thinking of slights of this sort when he wrote his Epitaph : — 

" Nobles and heralds, by your leave, 

Here lies what once was Matthew Prior, 
The son of Adam and of Eve ; 

Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher ? '' 

But, in this case, the old prejudice got the better of the old joke. 



4^2 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

wants, he says, is her Majesty's picture ; without that he can't 
be happy. 

" Thee, gracious Anne, thee present I adore : 
Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and Fate have power 
Higher to raise the glories of thy reign, 
In words sublimer and a nobler strain 
May future bards the mighty theme rehearse. 
Here, Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, 
The votive tablet I suspend.'' 

With that word the poem stops abruptly. The votive tablet 
is suspended for ever, like Mahomet's coffin. News came that 
the Queen was dead. Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, 
were left there, hovering to this day, over the votive tablet. 
The picture was never got, any more than the spoons and 
dishes : the inspiration ceased, the verses were not wanted — 
the ambassador wasn't wanted. Poor Matt was recalled from 
his embassy, suffered disgrace along with his parents, lived 
under a sort of cloud ever after, and disappeared in Essex. 
When deprived of all his pensions and emoluments, the hearty 
and generous Oxford pensioned him. They played for gallant 
stakes — the bold men of those days — and lived and gave 
splendidly. 

Johnson quotes from Spence a legend, that Prior, after 
spending an evening with Harley, St. John, Pope, and Swift, 
would go off and smoke a pipe with a couple of friends of his, 
a soldier and his wife, in Long Acre. Those who have not 
read his late Excellency's poems should be warned that they 
smack not a little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. 
Johnson speaks lightly of his lyrics ; but with due deference to 
the great Samuel, Prior's seem to be amongst the easiest, the 
richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical 
poems.* Horace is always in his mind : and his song, and his 

* His epigrams have the genuine sparkle : 

" The Remedy worse than the Disease. 

" I sent for Radcliff ; was so ill, 

That other doctors gave me over : 
He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill, 
And I was likely to recover. 

" But when the wit began to wheeze,' 

And wine had warmed the politician, 
Cured yesterday of my disease, 
I died last night of my physician." 



" Yes, every poet is a fool ; 

By demonstration Ned can show it ; 
Happy could Ned's inverted rule 
Prove every fool to be a poet.'* 



PRIOR, GA y, AND POPE. ifi2, 

philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, 
his loves and his Epicureanism bear a great resemblance to that 
most delightful and accomplished master. In reading his 
works, one is struck with their modern air, as well as by their 
happy similarity to the songs of the charming owner of the 
Sabine farm. In his verses addressed to Halifax, he says, 
writing of that endless theme to poets, the vanity of human 
wishes — 

" So whilst in fevered dreams we sink, 
And waking, taste what we desire, 
The real draught but feeds the fire, 
The dream is better than the drink. 

" Our hopes like towering falcons aim 
At objects in an airy height : 
To stand aloof and view the flight, 
Is all the pleasure of the game.'' 

Would not you fancy that a poet of our own days was sing- 
ing.'' and in the verses of Chloe weeping and reproaching him 
for his inconstancy, where he says — 

" The God of us versemen, you know, child, the Sun, 
How, after his journeys, he sets up his rest. 
If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run. 
At night hfc declines on his Thetis's breast. 

" So, when I am wearied with wandering all day, 
To thee, my delight, in the evening I come : 
No matter what beauties I saw in my way ; 

They were but my visits, but thou art my home 1 

" Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war. 
And let us like Horace and Lydia agree : 
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her, 
As he was a poet sublimer than me.'' 

If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior ? 
Love and pleasure finds singers in all days. Roses are always 
blowing and fading — to-day as in that pretty time when Prior 
sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting their decay — 

" She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers 
Pointing, the lovely moralist said : 

" On his death-bed poor Lubin lies, 
His spouse is in despair ; 
With frequent sobs and mutual cries. 
They both express their care. 

" ' A different cause,' says Parson Sly, 
' The same effect may give ; 
Poor Lubin fears that he shall die, 
His wife that he may live.' " 



464 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

See, friend, in some few fleeting hours, 
See yonder what a change is made ! 

" Ah me ! the blooming pride of May 
And that of Beauty are but one : 
At morn both flourish, bright and gay, 
Both fade at evening, pale and gone. 

" At da^vn poor Stella danced and sung. 
The amorous youth around her bowed : 
At night her fatal knell was rung ; 
I saw, and ki^ed her in her shroud. 

" Such as she is who died to-day, 

Such I, alas, may be to-morrow . 
Go, Damon, bid thy Muse display 
The justice of thy Chloe's sorrow.'' 

Damon's knell was rung in 1721. May his turf lie lightly 
on him. Dens sit propitius kuic potatori, as Walter de Mapes 
sang.* Perhaps Samuel Johnson, who spoke slightly of Prior's 

* " Prior to Sir Thomas Hanmer. 

"Dear Sir,- 'M^jj. 4, 1709- 

" Friendship may live, I grant you, without being fed and cherished by cor- 
respondence ; but with that additional benefit I am of opinion it will look more cheer- 
ful and thrive better : for in this case, as in love, though a man is sure of his own 
constancy, yet his happiness depends a good deal upon the sentiments of another, and 
while you and Chloe are alive, 'tis not enougli that I love you both, except 1 am sure 
you both love me again ; and as one of her scrawls fortifies my mind more against 
affliction than all Epictetus, with Simplicius's comments into the bargain, so your 
single letter gave me more real pleasure than all the works of Plato. ***** 
I must return my answer to your very kind question concerning my health. The 
Bath waters have done a good deal towards the recovery of it, and the great specific, 
Cape caballicm, will, I think, confirm it. Upon this head 1 must tell you tii.it my 
mare Betty grows blind, and may one day, by breaking my neck, perfect my cure : if 
at Rixam fair any pretty nagg that is between thirteen and fourteen hands presented 
himself, and you would be pleased to purchase him for me, one of your servants might 
ride him to Euston, and I might receive him there. This, sir, is just as such a thing 
happens. If you hear, too, of a Welch widow, with a good jointure, that has her 
goings and is not very skittish, pray, be pleased to cast your eye on her for me too. 
You see, sir, the great trust I repose in your skill and honor, when I dare put two such 
commissions in your hand. * * » * " — The Hanmer CorrcsfondcTtce, ■p. 120. 

"From Mr. Prior. 

« My dear Lord and Friend,- "^""-''^ '^^-'2'/' ^f^y, ^7H. _ 

" Matthew never had so great occasion to write a word to Henry as now: it 
is noised here that I am soon to return. The question that I wish I could answer to 
the many that ask, and to our friend Colbert de Torcy (to whom 1 made your compli- 
ments in the manner you commanded) is, what is done for me ; and to what I am re- 
called ? It may look like a bagatelle, what is to become of a philosopher like me ? 
but it is not such : what is to become of a person who had the honor to be chosen, 
and sent hither as intrusted, in the midst of a war, with what the Queen designed should 
make the peace ; returning with the Lord Bolingbroke, one of the greatest men in 
England, and one of the finest heads in Europe (as they say here, if true or not, 
n'importc) ; having been left by him in the greatest character (that of her Majesty's 
Plenipotentiary), exercising that power conjointly with the Duke of Shrewsbury, and 
solely after his departure ; having here received more distinguished honor than any 
Minister, except an Ambassador, ever did, and some which were never given to any 



PRIOR, GA V, AiVD POPE. 465 

verses, enjoyed them more than he was willing to own. The old 
moralist had studied them as well as Thomas Moore, and de- 
fended them, and showed that he remembered them very well too, 
on an occasion when their morality was called in question 
by that noted puritan, James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck.* 
In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserved to be a 

but who had that character ; having had all the success that could be expected ; 
having (God be thanked !) spared no pains, at a time when at home the peace is voted 
safe and lionorable — at a time when the Earl of Oxford is Lord Treasurer and Lord 
Bolingbroke First Secretary of State? This unfortunate person, I say, neglected, 
forgot, unnamed to anything that may speak the Queen satisfied with his services, or 
his friends concerned as to his fortune, 

'• Mr. de Torcy put me quite out of countenance, the other day, by a pity that 
wounded me deeper than ever did the cruelty of the late Lord Godolphin. He said 
he would write to Robin and H.irry about me. God forbid, my lord, that I should 
need any foreign intercession, or owe the least to any Frenchman living, besides the 
decency of behavior and the returns of common civility : some say I am to go to 
Baden, others that I am to be added to the Commissioners for settling the commerce. 
In all cases I am ready, but in the meantime, die aUqiud de irihus cafeHis. Neither 
of these two are, I presume, honors or rewards, neither of them (let me say to my 
dear Lord Bolingbroke, and let him not be angry with me,) are what drift may aspire 
to, and wliat Mr. Whitworth, who was his fellow-clerk, has or may possess. I am far 
from desiring to lessen the great mer'.t of the gentleman I named, for I heartily esteem 
and love him ; but in this trade of ours, my lord, in which you are the general, as in 
that of the soldiery, there is a certain right acquired by time and long service. You 
would do anything for your Queen's service, but you would not be contented to de- 
scend, and be degraded to a charge, no way proportioned to that of Secretary of State, 
any more than Mr. Ross, though he would charge a party with a halberd in his hand, 
would be content all his life after to be Sergeant. Was my Lord Dartmouth, from 
Secretai-y, returned again to be Commissioner of Trade, or from Secretary of War, 
would Fr.'.nk Gwyn think himself kindly used to be returned again to be Commis- 
sioner ? In short, my lord, you have put me above myself, and if I am to return to 
myself, I shall return to something very discontented and uneasy. I am sure, my 
lord, you will make the best use you can of this hint for my good. If I am to have 
anything, it will certainly be for Her Majesty's service, and tl^ credit of my friends 
in the Ministry, that it be done before I am recalled from home, lest the world may 
think either that 1 have merited to be disgraced, or that ye dare not stand by me. If 
nothing is to be Aona,Jiat voluntas Del. I have writ to Lord Treasurer upon this 
subject, and having implored your kind intercession, I promise you it is the last re- 
monstrance of this kind that I will ever make. Adieu, my lord; all honor,. health 
and pleasure to you. '• Yours ever, Matt.'' 

" P.S. — Lady Jersey is just gone from me. We drank your healths together in 
usquebaugh after cur tea : we are the greatest friends alive. Once more adieu. 
There is no such thing as the ' Book of Travels ' you mentioned ; if there be, let 
friend Tilson send us more particular account of them, for neither I nor Jacob Tonson 
can find them. Pray send Barton back to me, I hope with some comfortable tidings.'' 
— Bolingbroke' s Letters. 

* " I asked whether Prior's poems were to be printed entire ; Johnson said they 
were. I mentioned Lord Hales' censure of Prior in his preface to a collection of 
sacred poems, by various hands, published by him at Edinburgh a great many years 
ago, where he mentions ' these impure tales, which will be the eternal opprobrium of 
their ingenious author.' Johnson: ' Sir Lord Hales has forgot. There is nothing 
in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hales thinks there is, he must be more 
combustible thr.n other people. ' I instanced the tale of ' Paulo Purganti and his wife.' 
Johnson: ' Sir, there is nothing there but that his wife wanted to be kissed, when 
poor Paulo was out of pocket. No, sir, Prior is a lady's book. No lady is ashamed 
to have it standing in her library." — Boswell's Life of Jolmson. 

30 



466 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

favorite, and to have good a place.* In his set all were fond of 
him. His success offended nobody. He missed a fortune 
once or twice. He was talked of for court favor, and hoped to 
win it ; but the court favor jilted him. Craggs gave him some 
South Sea Stock ; and at one time Gay had very nearly made 
his fortune. But Fortune shook her swift wings and jilted him 
too ; and so his friends, instead of being angry with him, and jeal- 
ous of him, were kind and fond of honest Gay. In the portraits of 
the literary worthies of the early part of the last century. Gay's 
face is the pleasantest perhaps of all. It appears adorned with 
neither periwig nor nightcap (the full dress and negligee of 
learning, without which the painters of those days scarcely ever 
portrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder with an 
honest boyish glee — an artless sweet humor. He was so kind, 
so gentle, so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally 
wobegone at others, such a natural good creature that the 
Giants loved him. The great Swift was gentle and sportive 
with him,t as the enormous Brobdingnag maids of honor were 
with little Gulliver. He could frisk and fondle round Pope,1: 
and sport, and bark, and caper, without offending the most 

* Gay was of an old Devonshire family, but his pecuniary prospects not being great, 
was placed in his youth in the house of a silk-merccr in London. He was born in 
i6S8 — Pope's year, and in 1712 the Duchess of Monmouth made him her secretary. 
Next year he published his " Rural Sports," which he dedicated to Pope, and so made 
an acquaintance, which became a memorable friendship. 

" Gay," says Pope, '' was quite a natural man, — wholly without art or design, and 
spoke just what he thought and as he thought it. He dangled for twenty years about 
a court, and at last was offered to be made usher to the young princesses. Secretary 
Craggs made Gay a present of stock in the South Sea year ; and he was once worth 
20,000/., but lost it al] again. He got about 400/. by the first ' Beggar's Opera,' and 
1,100/. or 1,200/. by the second. He was negligent and a bad manager. Latterly, 
the Duke of Queensbury took his money into his keeping, and let him only have what 
was necessary out of it, and, as he lived with them, he could not have occasion for 
much. He died worth upwards of 3,000/.'' — Pope. Spencers Anecdotes. 

t " Mr. Gay is, in all regards, as honest and sincere a man as ever I knew.'' — 
Swift, To Lady Betty Gcrmainc, Jan. 1733. 

% " Of manners gentle, of affections mild ; 

In wit a man ; simplicity, a child ; 
With native humor temp' ring virtuous rage, 
Form'd to delight at once and lash the age ; 
Above temptation in a low estate. 
And uncorrupted e'en among the great : 
A safe companion, and an easy friend, 
.Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end. 
These are thy honors ; not that here thy bust 
Is mixed with heroes, or with kings thy dust ; 
But that the worthy and the good shall say, 
Striking their pensive bosoms, ' Here lies Gay.' '' 

Pope's Epitaph on Gay. 
" A hare who, in a civil way. 
Complied with everything, like Gay." 

Fables, " The Hare and many Frtendt. " 



PRIOR, GA y, AND POPE. 467 

thin-skinned of poets and men ; and when he was jilted in that 
little court affair of which we have spoken, his warm-hearted 
patrons the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry* (the " Kitty, 

* " I can give you no account of Gaj','' says Pope, curiously, " since he was raffled 
for, and won back by his Duchess."— M^frZ-j-, Roscoc^s Ed., vol. ix. p. 392. 

Here is the letter Pope wrote to him when the death of Queen Anne brought back 
Lord Clarendon from Hanover, and lost him the Secretaryship of that nobleman, of 
which he had had but a short tenure. 

Gay's court prospects were never happy from this time. — His dedication of the 
" Shepherd's Week " to Bolingbroke, Swift used to call the " original sin " which had 
hurt him with the house of Hanover : — 

"Dear Mr. Gay,- . . . " 5.//. 23, 1 714. 

" Welcome to your native soil ! welcome to your friends ! thrice welcome to 
me ! whether returned in glory, blest with court interest, the love and familiarity of 
the great, and filled with agreeable hopes ; or melancholy with dejection, contempla- 
tive of the changes of fortune, and doubtful for the future ; whether returned a 
triumphant Whig or a desponding Tory, equally all hail ! equally beloved and wel- 
come to me 1 If happy, I am to partake in your elevation ; if unhappy, you have still 
a warm corner in my heart, and a retreat at Binfield in the worst of times at your 
service. If you are a Tory, or thought so by any man, I know it can proceed from 
nothing but your gratitude to a few people who endeavored to serve you, and whose 
politics were never your concern. If you are a Whig, as I rather hope, and as I think 
your principles and mine (as brother poets) had ever a bias to the side of liberty, I 
know you will be an honest man and an inoffensive one. Upon the whole, I know you 
are incapable of being so mucli of either party as to be good for nothing. Therefore, 
once more, whatever you are or in whatever state you are, all hail ! 

" One or two of your old friends complained they had heard nothing from you since 
the Queen's death ; I told them no man living loved Mr. Gay better than I, yet I had 
not once written to him in all his voyage. This I thought a convincing proof how 
truly one may b(?a friend to another without telling him so every month. Liut they 
had reasons, too, themselves to allege in your excuse, as men who really value one 
another will never want such as make their friends and themselves easy. The late 
universal concern in public affairs threw us all into a hurry of spirits : even I, who am 
more a philosopher than to expect anything from any reign, was borne away with 
the current, and full of the expectation of the successor. During your journeys, I 
knew not whither to aim a letter after you ; that was a sort of shooting flying : add to 
this the demand Homer had upon me, to write fifty verses a day, besides learned notes, 
all which are at a conclusion for this year. Rejoice with me, O my friend I that my 
labor is over ; come and make merry with me in much feasting. We will feed among 
the lilies (by the lilies I mean the ladies). Are not the Rosalindas of Britain as charm- 
ing as the Blousalindas of the Hague ? or have the two great Pastoral poets of our 
nation renounced love at the same time ? for Philips, immortal Philips, hath deserted,* 
yea, and in a rustic manner kicked his Rosalind. Dr. Parnell and I have been insep- 
arable ever since you went. We are now at the Bath, where (if you are not, as I 
heartily hope, better engaged) your coming would be the greatest pleasure to us in the 
world. Talk not of expenses : Homer shall support his children. I beg a line from 
you, directed to the Post-house in Bath. Poor Parnell is in an ill state of health. 

" Pardon me if 1 add a word of advice in the poetical way. Write something on 
the King, or Prince, or Princess. On whatsoever foot you may be with the court, 
this can do no harm, I shall never know where to end, and am confounded in the 
many things I have to say to you, though they all amount but to this, that I am, 
entirely, as ever, 

" Your,'' &c. 

Gay took the advice " in the poetical way,'' and published " An Epistle to a Lady, 
occasioned by the arrival of her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales." But 
though this brought him access to court, and the attendance of the Prince and 



468 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

beautiful and young," of Prior,) pleaded his cause with indig- 
nation, and quitted the court in a huff, carrying off with them 
into their retirement their Ivind gentle protege. With these 
kind lordly folks, a real Duke and Duchess, as delightful as 
those who harbored Don Quixote, and loved that dear old 
Sancho, Gay lived, and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate 
of chicken, and his saucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, 
and wheezed, and grew fat, and so ended.* He became very 
melancholy and lazy, sadly plethoric, and only occasionally 
diverting in his latter days. But everybody loved him, and 
the remembrance of his pretty little tricks ; and the raging old 
Dean of St. Patrick's, chafing in his banishment, was afraid to 
open the letter which Pope wrote him, announcing the sad 
news of the death of Gay.f 

Swift's letters to him are beautiful ; and having no purpose 
but kindness in writing to him, no party aim to advocate, or slight 
or anger to wreak, every word the Dean says to his favorite is 
natural, trustv/orthy, and kindly. His admiration for Gay's 
parts and honesty, and his laughter at his weaknesses, were 
alike just and genuine. He paints his character in wonderful 
pleasant traits of jocular satire. " I writ lately to Mr. Pope," 
Swift says, writing to Gay : " I wish you had a little villakin 
in his neighborhood ; but you are yet too volatile, and any lady 
with a coach and six horses would carry you to Japan." " If 
your ramble," says Swift, in another letter, "was on horseback, 
I am glad of it, on account of your health ; but I know your 
arts of patching up a journey between stage-coaches and 

Princess at his farce of the " What d'ye call it ? " it did not bring him a place. On 
the accession of George II., he was offered the situation of Gentleman Usher to the 
Princess Louisa (her Highness being then two years old) ; but " by this offer,'' says 
Johnson, "he thought himself insulted.'' 

* "Gay was a great eater. — As the French philosopher used to prove his existence 
by Cogito, ergo si<)?t, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is, Edit, ergo est." — CoN- 
' GREVE, in a Letter to PJfe. Sfenee^s Anecdotes. 

t Swift endorsed the letter — " On my dear friend Mr. Gay's death ; received Dec. 
15, but not read till the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some misfortune.'' 

" It was by Swift's interests that Gay was made known to Lord Bolingbroke, and 
obtained his patronage.'' — Scott's Swift, vol. i. p. 156. 

Pope wrote on the occasion of Gay's death, to Swift, thus : — 

"[Dec. 5, 1732.] 
i< * * * * One of the nearest and longest ties I have ever had is broken all on a 
sudden by the unexpected death of poor Mr. Gay. An inflammatory fever hurried 
him out of this life m three days. * * * * He asked of you a few hours before 
when in acute torment by the inflammation in his bowels and breast. * * * * His 
sisters, we suppose, will be his heirs, who are two widows. * * * * Good God ! 
how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage ? In every friend we lose 
a part of ourselves, and the best part. God keep those we have left ! few are worth 
praying for, and one's self the least of all.'' 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 469 

friends coaches — for you are as arrant a cockney as any hosier 
in Cheapsicle. I have often had it in my head to put it into 
yours, that you ought to have some great work in scheme, which 
may take up seven years to finish, besides two or three under- 
ones that may add another thousand pounds to your stock, and 
then I shall be in less pain about you. I know you can find 
dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well, without 
considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings 
you but half a crown a day." And then Swift goes off from 
Gay to pay some grand compliments to her Grace the Duchess 
of Queensberry, in whose sunshine Mr. Gay was basking, and 
in whose radiance the Dean would have liked to warm himself 
too. 

But we have Gay here before us, in these letters — lazy, 
kindly, uncommonly idle ; rather slovenly, I'm afraid ; forever 
eating atid saying good things ; a little round French abbe of a 
man, sleek, soft-handed, and soft-hearted. 

Our object in these lectures is rather to describe the men 
than their works ; or to deal with the latter only in as far as 
they seem to illustrate the character of their writers. Mr. Gay's 
" Fables," which were written to benefit that amiable Prince, 
the Duke of Cumberland, the warrior of Dettingen and Cullo- 
den, I have not, I own, been able to peruse since a period of 
very early youth ; and it must be confessed that they did not 
effect much benefit upon the illustrious young Prince, whose 
manners they were intended to mollif}^ and whose natural fe- 
rocity our gentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. 
But the six pastorals called the " Shepherd's Week," and the 
burlesque poem of " Trivia," any man fond of lazy literature 
will find delightful at the present day, and must read from be- 
ginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry what charm- 
ing little Dresden china figures are to sculpture : graceful, 
minikin, fantastic; with a certain beauty always accompanying 
them. The pretty little personages of the pastoral, with gold 
clocks to their stockings, and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks 
and waistcoats and bodices, dance their loves to a minuet-tune 
played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer, or rush from 
the false one daintily on their red-heeled tip-toes, and die of 
despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles ; 
or repose, simpering at each other, under an arbor of pea-green 
crockery; or piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed 
with the best Naples in a stream of Bergamot. Gay's gay plan 
seems to me far pleasanter than that of Phillips — his rival and 
Pope's — a serious and dreary idyllic cockney ; not that Gay's 



47 o 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



"Bumkinets and " Hobnelias " are a whit more natural than 
the would-be serious characters of the other posture-master; 
but the equality of this true humorist was to laugh and make 
laugh, though alwa3's with a secret kindness and tenderness, to 
perform the drollest little antics and capers, but always with a 
certain grace, and to sweet music — as you may have seen a 
Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, turn- 
ing over head and heels, or clattering and pirouetting in a pair 
of wooden shoes, yet always with a look of love and appeal in 
his bright eyes, and a smile that asks and wins affection and 
protection. Happy they who have that sweet gift of nature ! 
It was this which made the great folks and court ladies free and 
friendly with John Gay — which made Pope and Arbuthnot love 
him — which melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought 
of him — and drove away, for a moment or two, the dark frenzies 
which obscured the lonely tyrant's brain, as he heard Gay's 
voice with its simple melody and artless ringing laughter. 

What used to be said about Rubini, qti'll avait des iarfus dans 
la voix, may be said of Gay,* and of one other humorist of 
whom we shall have to speak. In almost every ballad of his, 
however slight,t in the Beggar's Opera " and in its wearisome 

* " Gay, like Goldsmith, had a musical talent. ' He could play on the flute,' says 
Malone, ' and was, therefore, enabled to adapt so happily some of the airs in the 
" Beggar's Opera." ' " — Noles to Spence. 

" 'Twas when the seas were roaring 

With hollow blasts of wind, 
A damsel lay deploring 

All on a rock reclined. 
Wide o'er the foaming billows 

She cast a wistful look ; 
Her head was crown'd with willows 

That trembled o'er the brook. 

" ' Twelve months are gone and over, 

And nine long tedious days ; 
Why didst thou, venturous lover — 

Why didst thou trust the seas ? 
Cease, cease, thou cruel Ocean, 

And let my lover rest ; 
Ah ! what's thy troubled motion 

To that within my breast 

" ' The merchant, robb'd of pleasure, 

Sees tempests in despair ; 
But what's the loss of treasure 

To losing of my dear ? 
Should you some coast be laid on, 

Where gold and diamonds grow 
You'd find a richer maiden, 

But none that loves you so. 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 471 

continuation (where the verses are to the full as pretty as in 
the first piece, however), there is a peculiar, hinted, pathetic, 
sweetness and melody.* It charms and melts you. It's inde- 
finable, but it exists ; and is the property of John Gay's and 
Oliver Goldsmith's best verse, as fragrance is of a violet, or 
freshness of a rose. 

Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so 
famous that most people here are no doubt familiar with it, but 
so delightful that it is always pleasant to hear : — 

" I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord 
Harcourt's which he lent me. It overloolcs a common field, where, under the shade 
of a haycoclc, sat two lovers — as constant as ever were found in romance — beneath a 
spreading beech. The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet ; of 
the other Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about five and twenty ; Sarah a 
brown woman of eighteen. John had for several months borne the labor of tlie day 

" 'How can they say that Nature 

Has nothing made in vain ; 
Why, then, beneath the water > 

Should hideous rocks remain ? 
No eyes the rocks discover 

That lurk beneatli the deep, 
To wreck the wandering lover, 

And leave the maid to weep ? ' 

" All melancholy lying. 

Thus wailed she for her dear; 
Repay'd each blast with sighing, 

Each billow with a tear ; 
When o'er the white wave stooping, 

His floating corpse she spy'd ; 
Then like a lily drooping. 

She bow'd her head, and died." 

—A Ballad from the " What d'ye call it 7 " 

" What can be prettier than Gay's ballad, or, rather. Swift's, Arbuthnot's, Pope's 
and Gay's, in the ' What d'ye call it?' ' 'Twas when the seas were roaring?' I 
have been well informed that they all contributed." — Coxvper to Utiwin, 17S3. 

* " Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort of 
thing a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a thing for 
some time, but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy on the same 
plan. This was what gave rise to the ' Beggar's Opera.' He began on it, and when 
he first mentioned it to Swift, the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried 
it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us ; and we now and then gave a correction, 
or a word or two of advice ; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was 
done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after 
reading it over, said, ' It would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly.' We 
were all at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very 
much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, 
say, ' It will do — it must do ! — I see it in the eyes of them ! ' This was a good while 
before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon ; for the Duke [besides his 
own good taste] has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering 
the taste of the public. He was quite right in this as usual ; the good nature of the 
audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamor of ap- 
plause.'' — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 



473 E^^GLlSn HUMOR IS TS. 

in the same field with Sarah ; when she milked, it was his morning and evening 
charge to bring the cows to her pail. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of 
the whole neighborhood, for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each 
other in marriage; It was but this very morning that he had obtained her parents' 
consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Per- 
haps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding- 
clothes ; and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field-flowers to her 
complexion, to make her a present of knots for the day. While they were thus em- 
ployed (it was on the last of July), a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, 
that di'ove the laborers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, fright- 
ened and out of breath, sunk on a haycock; and John (who never separated from 
her), sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together, to secure her. Im- 
mediately there was heard so loud a crack, as if heaven had burst asunder. The 
laborers, all solicitous for each other's safety, called to one another : those that were 
nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stepped to the place where they lay : they first 
saw a little smoke, and after, this faithfid pair — John, with one arm about his Sarah's 
neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. They 
were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was 
no mark or discoloring on their bodies — only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little signed, 
and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in one grave. 

And the proof that this description is delightful and beauti- 
ful is, that the great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he 
thought proper to steal it and send it off to a certain lady and 
wit, with whom he pretended to be in love in those da3s — my 
Lord Duke of Kingston's daughter, and married to Mr. Wortley 
Montagu, then his Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople. 

We are now come to the greatest name on our list — the 
highest among the poets, the highest among the. English wits 
and humorists with whom we have to rank him. If the author 
of the " Dunciad " be not a humorist, if the poet of the " Rape 
of the Lock " be not a wit, who deserves to be called so ? Be- 
sides that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both of which 
we should respect him, men of letters should admire him as 
being the greatest literary artist that England has seen. He 
polished, he refined, he thought ; he took thoughts from other 
works to adorn and complete his own ; borrowing an idea or a 
cadence from another poet as he would a figure or a siinile from 
a flower, or a river, stream, or any object which struck him in 
his walk, or contemplation of Nature. He began to imitate at 
an early age ; * and taught himself to write by copying printed 

* " Waller, Spencer, and Dryden were Mr. Pope's great favorites, in the order 
they are named, in his first reading, till he was about twelve years old." — Pope. 
Spence' s Anecdotes. 

" Mr. Pope's father (who was an honest merchant, and dealt in Hollands, whole- 
sale) was no poet, but he used to set him to make English verses when very young. 
He was pretty difficult in being pleased ; and used often to send him back to new 
turn them. ' These are not good rhimes ; ' for that was my husband's word for 
Terses." — Pope's Mother. Spence. 

" I wrote things, I'm ashamed to say how soon. Part of an Epic Poem when 



PRIOR, GA V, AND POPE. 473 

booRs. Then he passed into the hands of the priests, and from 
his first clerical master,, who came to him when he was eight 
3'ears old, he went to a school at Twyford, and another school at 
Hyde Park, at which places he unlearned all that he had got from 
his first instructor. At twelve years old, he went with his father 
into Windsor Forest, and there learned for a few months under 
a fourth priest. '• And this was all the teaching I ever had," 
he said, " and God knows it extended a very little way." 

When he had done with his priests he took to reading by 
himself, for which he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, 
especially for poetry. He learned versification from Dryden, 
he said. In his youthful poem of " Alcander," he imitated 
every poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statins, Homer, Virgil. 
In a few years he had dipped into a great number of the 
English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. " This I 
did," he says, " without any design, except to amuse myself ; 
and got the languages by hunting after the stories in the several 
poets I read, rather than read the books to get the languages. 
I followed everywhere as my fancy led me, and was like a boy 
gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fell in 
his way. These five or six years I looked upon as the hap- 
piest in my life." Is not here a beautiful holiday picture ? 
The forest and the fairy story-book — the boy spelling Ariosto 
or Virgil under the trees, battling with the Cid for the love of 
Chimene, or dreaming of Armida's garden — peace and sunshine 
round about — the kindest love and tenderness waiting for him 
at his quiet home yonder — and Genius throbbing in his young 
heart, and whispering to him, " You shall be great ; you shall 
be famous ; you too shall love and sing ; you will sing her so 
nobly that some kind heart shall forget you are weak and ill- 
formed. Every poet had a love. Fate must give one to you 
too," — and day by day he walks the forest, very likely looking 

about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes and some of the neighborin,5 islands ; 
and the poem opened under water with a description of the Court of Neptune.'' — 
Pope. Ibid. 

" His perpetual application (after he set to study of himself) reduced him in four 
years' time to so bad a state of health, that, after trying physicians for a good wliile 
in vain, he resolved to give way to his distemper ; and sat down calmly in a full ex- 
pectation of death in a short time. Under this thought, he wrote letters to take a 
last farewell of some of his more particular friends, and, among the rest, one to the 
Abbe Southcote. The Abbe was extremely concerned, both for his very ill state of 
health and the resolution he said he had taken. He thought there might yet be hope, 
and went immediately to Dr. Radcliffe, with whom he was well acquainted, told him 
Mr. Pope's case, got full directions from him, and carried them down to Pope in 
Windsor Forest. The chief thing the Doctor ordered him was to apply less, and to 
ride every day. The following his advice soon restored him to his health." — Pope, 
S^ence. 



474 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



out for that charmer. " They were the happiest days of his" 
life," he says, when he was only dreaming of his fame : when 
he had gained that mistress she was no consoler. 

That charmer made her appearance, it would seem, about 
the year 1705, when Pope was seventeen. Letters of his are 

extant, addressed to a certain Lady M , whom the youth 

courted, and to whom he expressed his ardor in language, to 
say no worse of it, that is entirely pert, odious and affected. 
He imitated love-compositions as he had been imitating love- 
poems just before — it was a sham mistress he courted, and a 
sham passion, expressed as became it. These unlucky letters 
found their way into print years afterwards, and were sold to 
the congenial Mr. Curll. If any of my hearers, as I hope 
they may, should take a fancy to look at Pope's correspond- 
ence, let them pass over that first part of it ; over, perhaps, 
almost all Pope's letters to women ; in which there is a tone of 
not pleasant gallantry, and amidst a profusion of compliments 
and politenesses, a something which makes one distrust the 
little pert, prurient bard. There is very little indeed to say 
about his loves, and that little not edifying. He wrote flames 
and raptures and elaborate verse and prose for Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu ; but that passion probably came to a climax 
in an impertinence and was extinguished by a box on the ear, 
or some such rebuff, and he began on a sudden to hate her with 
a fervor much more genuine than that of his love had been. 
It was a feeble, puny grimace of love, and paltering with pas- 
sion. After Mr. Pope had sent off one of his fine composi- 
tions to Lady Mary, he made a second draft from the rough 
copy, and favored some other friend with it. He was so 
charmed with the letter of Gay's that I have just quoted, that 
he had copied that and amended it, and sent it to Lady Mary 
as his own. A gentleman who writes letters h deux Jins, and 
having poured out his heart to the beloved, serves up the same 
dish rechauffe to a friend, is not very much in earnest about his 
loves, however much he maybe in his piques and vanities when 
his impertinence gets its due. 

But, save that unlucky part of the " Pope Correspondence," 
I do not know, in the range of our literature, volumes more 
delightful* You live in them in the finest company in the 

* "Mr. Pope to the Rev. Mr. Broom, Pulham, Norfolk. 

"Dear Sir,- ^«^. 29'/., 1730. 

" I INTENDED to write to you on this melancholy subject, the death of Mr. 
Fenton, before yours came, but stayed to have informed myself and you of the circum- 
stances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a gradual decay, though so early in life, and 



PRIOR, GA V, AND POPE. 475 

world. A little stately, perhaps ; a little aprete and conscious 
that they are speaking to whole generations who are listening ; 
but in the tone of their voices — pitched, as no doubt they are, 

■was declining for five or six months. It was not, as I apprehended, the gout in his 
stomach, but, I believe, rather a complication first of gross humors, as he was nat- 
urally corpulent, not discharging themselves, as he used no sort of exercise. No 
man better bore the approaches of hi= dissolution (as I am told), or with less ostenta- 
tion yielded up his being. The great modesty which you know was natural to him, 
and the great contempt he had for all sorts of vanity and parade, never appeared more 
than in his last moments : he had a conscious satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, 
in feeling himself honest, true, and unpretending to more than his own. So he died 
as he lived, with that secret, yet sufficient contentment. 

" As to any papers left beliind him, I dare say they can be but few ; for this reason, 
he never wrote out of vanity, or thought much of the applause of men. I know an 
instance when he did his utmost to conceal his own merit that way ; and if we join 
to this his natural love of ease, I fancy we must expect little of this sort : at least, I 
have heard of none, except some few further remarks on Waller (which his cautious 
integrity made him leave an order to be given to Mr. Tonson), and perhaps, though 
it is many years since I saw it, a translation of the first book of ' Oppian.' He had 
begun a tragedy of ' Dion,' but made small progress in it. 

" As to his other affairs, he died poor but honest, leaving no debts or legacies, ex- 
cept of a few pounds to Mr. Trumbull and my lady, in token of respect, gratefulness, 
and mutual esteem. 

" I shall with pleasure take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet, deserving, un- 
pretending, Christian, and philosophical character in his epitaph. There truth may 
be spoken in a few words ; as for flourish, and oratory, and poetry, I leave them to 
younger and more lively writers, such as love writing for writing's sake, and would 
rather show their own fine parts than report the valuable ones of any other man. So 
the elegy I renounce. 

" I condole with you from my heart on the loss of so worthy a man, and a friend 
to us botli. * * * * 

" Adieu ; let us love his memory and profit by his example. Am very sincerely, 
dear sir, Your affectionate and real servant.'' 

"To THE Earl of Burlington. a ^ ,„., 

"My Lord, August, 1714. 

" If your mare could speak she would give you an account of what extraor- 
dinary company she had on the road, which, since she cannot do, I will. 

" It was the enterprising Mr. Lintot, the redoubtable rival of Mr. Tonson, who, 
mounted on a stone-horse, overtook me in Windsor Forest. He said he heard I de- 
signed for Oxford, the seat of the Muses, and would, as my bookseller, by all means 
accompany me thither. 

" I asked him where he got his horse ? He answered he got it of his publisher ; 
' for that rogue, my printer,' said he, ' disappointed me. I hoped to put him in good- 
humor by a treat at the tavern of a brown fricassee of rabbits, which cost ten shillings, 
with two quarts of wine, besides my conversation. I thought myself cock-sure of his 
horse, which he readily promised me, but said that Mr. Tonson had just such another 
design of going to Cambridge, expecting there the copy of a new kind of Horace 

from Dr. ; and if Mr. Tonson went, he was pre-engaged to attend him, being to 

have the printing of the said copy. So, in short, I borrowed this stone-horse of my 
publisher, which he had of Mr. Oldmixon for a debt. He lent me, too, the pretty boy 
you see after me. He was a smutty dog yesterday, and cost me more than two liours 
to wash the ink off his face ; but the devil is a fair-conditional devil, and very for- 
ward in his catechism. If you have any more bags he shall carry them.' 

" I thought Mr. Lintot's civility not to be neglected, so gave the boy a small bag 
containing three shirts and an Elzevir Virgil, and, mounting in an instant, proceeded 
on the road, with my man before, my courteous stationer beside, and the aforesaid 
devil behind. 

" Mr. Lintot began in this manner : ' Now, damn them 1 What if they should put 



476 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



beyond the mere conversation key — in the expression of their 
thoughts, their various views and natures, there is something 
generous, and cheering, and ennobling. You are in the society 

it into the newspaper how you and I went together to Oxford? What would I care? 
If I should go down into Sussex they would say 1 was gone to the Speaker ; but what 
of 'ihat ? If my son were but big enough to go on with the business, by G— d, I would 
keep as good company as old Jacob.' 

" Hereupon, 1 inquired of his son. ' The lad,' says he, 'has fine parts, but is 
somewhat sickly, much as you are. I spare for nothing in his education at West 
minster. Pray, don't you think Westminster to be the best school in England ? 
Most of the late Ministry came out of it; so did many of this Ministry. 1 hope the 
boy will make his fortune.' 

"' Don't you design to let him pass a year at Oxford?' ' To what purpose?' 
said he. ' The Universities do but make pedants, and 1 intend to breed him a man 
of business.' 

" As Mr. Lintot was talking I observed he sat uneasy on his saddle, for which I ex- 
pressed some solicitude. ' Nothing,' says he. ' I can bear it well enough ; but, since 
we have tlie day before us, methinks it would be very pleasant for you to rest awhile 
under the woods.' When we were alighted, ' See, here, what a mighty pretty Horace 
I have in my pocket ? What, if you amused yourself in turning an ode till we mount 
again 1 Lord ! if you pleased, what a clever miscellany might you make at leisure 
hours ? ' ' Perhaps I may,' said I, ' if we ride on : the motion is an aid to my fancy ; 
a round trot very much awakens my spirits ; then jog on apace, and I'll think as hard 
as I can.' 

" Silence ensued for a full hour ; after which Mr. Linton lugged the reins, stopped 
short, and broke out, ' Well, sir, how far have you gone ? ' 1 answered, seven miles. 
' Z — ds, sir,' said Lintot, ' I thought you had done seven stanzas. Oldsworth, in a 
ramble round Wimbledon Hill, would translate a whole ode in half this time. I'll say 
that for Oldsworth [thou[;h I lost by his Timothy's], he translates an ode of Horace 
the quickest of any man in Enc;land. I remember Dr. King would write verses in a 
tavern, three hours aft.r he could not speak : and there is Sir Richard, in that rum- 
bling old chariot of his, between Fleet Ditch and St. Giles's Pound, shall make you 
half a Job.' 

" ' Fray, Mr. Lintot,' said I, ' now you talk of translators, what is your method of 
managing them ? ' ' Sir,' replied he, ' these are the saddest pack of rogues in the 
world : in a hungry fit, they'll swear they understand all the languages in the universe. 
I have known one of them take down a Greek book upon my counter and cry, " Ah, 
this is Hebrew, and must read it from the latter end." By G — d, I can never be sure 
in these fellows, for I neither understand Greek, Latin, French, nor Italian myself. 
But this is my way ; I agree with them for ten shillings per sheet, with a proviso that 
I will have their doings corrected with whom I please ; so by one or the other 
they are led at last to the true sense of an author ; my judgment giving the negative 
to all my translators.' ' Then how are you sure these correctors may not impose upon 
you ?' ' Why, I get any civil gentleman (especially any Scotchman) that comes into 
my shop, to read the original to me in English ; by this I know whether my first trans- 
lator be deficient, and whether my corrector merits his money or not. 

'" I'll tell you what happened to me last month. I bargained with S for a 

new version of " Lucretius,'' to publish against Tonson's, agreeing to pay the author 
so many shillings at his producing so many lines. He made a great progress in a 
very short time, and I gave it to the corrector to compare with the Latin ; but he 
went directly to Creech's translation, and found it the same, word for word, all but the 
first page. Now, what d'ye think I did ? I arrested the translator for a cheat ; nay, 
and I stopped the corrector's pay, too, upon the proof that he had made use of Creech 
instead of the original.' 

" ' Pray tell me next how you deal with the critics ? ' ' Sir,' said he, ' nothing 
more easy. I can silence thj most formidable of them ; the rich ones for a sheet 
apiece of the blotted manuscript, which cost me nothing ; they'll go about with it to 
their acquaintance, and pretend they had it from the author, who submitted it to their 
correction : this has given some of them such an air, that in time they come to be con- 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 477 

of men who have filled the greatest parts in the world's story 
— you are with St. John the statesman ; Peterborough the con- 
queror; Swift, the greatest wit of all times; Gay, the kindliest 
laugher — it is a privilege to sit in that company. Delightful 
and generous banquet ! with a little faith and a little fancy any 

suited with and dedicated to as the tip-top critics of the town.— As for the poor critics, 
I'll give you one instance of my management, by which you may guess the rest : A 
lean man, that looked like a very good scholar, came to me t'other day; he turned over 
your Homer, shook his head, shrugged up his shoulders, and pish'd at every line of it. 
" One would wonder,' says he, " at the strange presumption of some men ; Homer is 

no such easy task as every stripling, every versifier " he was going on when my 

wife called to dinner. " Sir,'' said I, " will you please to eat a piece of beef with me ? " 
" Mr. Lintot," said he, " I am very sorry you should be at the expense of this great 
book : I am really concerned on your account.'' " Sir, I am much obliged to you ; if 

you can dine upon a piece of beef, together with a piece of pudding ? '' — "Mr. 

Lintot, I do not say but Mr. Pope, if he would condescend to advise with men of 

learning " — " Sir, the pudding is upon the table, if you please to go in." My 

critic complies ; he comes to a taste of your poetry, and tells me in the same breath 
that the book is commendable, and the pudding excellent. 

'" Now, sir,' continued Mr. Lintot, ' in return for the frankness I have shown, 
pray tell me, is it the opinion of your friends at court that my Lord Lansdowne will 
be brought to the bar or not ? ' I told him I heard he would not, and I hoped it, my 
lord being one I had particular obligations to. — ' That may be,' replied Mr. Lintot ; 
'but by G if he is not, I shall lose the printing of a very good trial.' 

" These, my lord, are a few traits with which you discern the genius of Mr. Lintot, 
which I have chosen for the subject of a letter. I dropped him as soon as I got to 
Oxford, and paid a visit to my Lord Carleton, at Middleton. * * * 

" I am," &c. 

"Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope. 

" Sept. 29, 1725. 

" I am now returning to the noble scene of Dublin — \vA.o\h& grand mondc — for 
fear of burying my parts ; to signalize myself among curates and vicars, and correct 
all corruptions crept in relating to the weight of bread and butter through those do- 
minions where I govern. I have employed my time (besides ditching) in finishing, 
correcting, amending, and transcribing my ' Travels ' [Gulliver's], in four parts com- 
plete, newly augmented, and intended for the press when the world shall deserve 
them, or rather, when a printer shall be found brave enough to venture his ears. I 
like the scheme of our meeting after distresses and dispersions ; but the chief end I 
propose to myself in all my labors is to vex the world rather than divert it ; and if I 
could compass that design without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be the 
most indefatigable writer you have ever seen, without reading. I am exceedingly 
pleased that you have done with translations ; Lord Treasurer Oxford often lamented 
that a rascally world should lay you under a necessity of misemploying your genius for 
so long a time ; but since you will now be so much better employed, when you think 
of the world, give it one lash the more at my request. I have ever hated all nations, 
professions, and communities ; and all my love is towards individuals — for instance, I 
hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Councillor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one ; it is 
so with physicians (I will not speak of my own trade), soldiers, English, Scotch, 
French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man — 
although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. 

"* * * I have got materials towards a treatise proving the falsity of that definition 
animal rationale, and to show it should be only rationis eafax. * * * * The 
matter is so clear that it will admit of no dispute — nay, I will hold a hundred pounds 
that you and I agree in the point. * * * 

" Mr. Lewis sent me an account of Dr. Arbuthnot's illness, which is a very sensible 
affiiction to me, who, by living so long out of the world, have lost that hardness of heart 
contracted by years and general conversation. I am daily losing friends, and neither 



478 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

one of us here may enjoy it, and conjure up those great figures 
out of the past, and listen to their wit and wisdom. Mind that 
there is always a certain cachet about great men — they may be 
as mean on many points as you or I, but they carry their 
great air — they speak of common life more largely and gen- 
erously than common men do — they regard the world with a 
manlier countenance, and see its real features more fairly than 
the timid shufflers who only dare to look up at life through 
blinkers, or to have an opinion when there is a crowd to back 
it. He who reads these noble records of a past age, salutes 
and reverences the great spirits who adorn it. You may go 
home now and talk with St. John ; you may take a volume 
from your library and listen to Swift and Pope. 

Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say 
to him, Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books 
and life that is the most wholesome society ; learn to admire 
rightly ; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great 
men admired ; they admired great things : narrow spirits ad- 
mire basely, and worship meanly. I know nothing in any story 

seeking nor getting others. Oh ! if the world had but a dozen of Arbuthnots in it, I 
would burn my ' Travels ! ' " 

" Mr. Pope to Dr. Swift. 

" October 15, 1725. 

" I am wonderfully pleased with the suddenness of your kind answer. It makes 
me hope you are coming towards us, and that you incline more and more to your old 
friends. * * * Here is one [Lord Bolingbroke] who was once a powerful planet, but 
has now (after long experience of all that comes of shining) learned to be content 
with returning to his first point without the thought or ambition of shining at all. 
Here is another [Edward, Earl of Oxford], who thinks one of the greatest glories of 
his father was to have distinguished and loved you, and who loves you hereditaril}'. 
Here is Arbuthnot, recovered from the jaws of death, and more pleased with the 
hope of seeing you again than of reviewing a world, every part of which he has long 
despised but what is made up of a few men like yourself. * * * 

" Our friend Gay is used as the friends of Tories are by Whigs — and generally by 
Tories too. Because he had humour, he was supposed to have dealt with Dr. Swift, 
in like manner as when any one had learning formerly, he was thought to have dealt 
with the devil. * * * 

" Lord Bolingbroke had not the least harm by his fall ; I wish he had received no 
more by his other fall. But Lord Bolingbroke is the most improved mind since you 
saw him, that ever was improved without shifting into a new body, or hemg faiillo 
vtiiiiis ab aiigdis. I have often imagined to myself, that if ever all of us meet again, 
after so many varieties and changes, after so much of the old world and of the old 
man in each of us has been altered, that scarce a single thought of the one, any more 
than a single atom of the other, remains just the same ; I have fancied, I say, that 
we should meet like the righteous in the millenium, quite in peace, divested of all our 
former passion, smiling at our past follies, and content to enjoy the kingdom of the 
just in tranquillity. 

" I designed to have left the following page for Dr. Arbuthnot to fill, but he is so 
touched with the period in yours to me, concerning him, that he intends to answer it by 
a whole letter. * * #'' 



PRIOR, GA Y, AND POPE. 479 

more gallant and cheering than the love and friendship which 
this company of famous men bore towards one another. There 
never has been a society of men more friendly, as there never 
was one more illustrious. Who dares quarrel with Mr. Pope, 
great and famous himself, for liking the society of men great 
and famous ? and for liking them for the qualities which made 
them so ? A mere pretty fellow from White's could not have 
written the " Patriot King," and would very likely have de- 
spised little Mr. Pope, the decrepit Papist, whom the great St. 
John held to be one of the best and greatest of men : a mere 
nobleman of the court could no more have won Barcelona, than 
he could have written Peterborough's letters to Pope,* which 
are as witty as Congreve : a mere Irish Dean could not have 
written "Gulliver;" and all these men loved Pope, and Pope 
loved all these men. To name his friends is to name the best 
men of his time. Addison had a senate ; Pope reverenced his 
equals. He spoke of Swift with respect and admiration always. 
His admiration for Bolingbroke was so great, that when some 
one said of his friend, " There is something in that great man 
which looks as if he was placed here by mistake," " Yes," 
Pope answered, " and when the comet appeared to us a month 
or two ago, I had sometimes an imagination that it maght pos- 
sibly be come to carry him home, as a coach comes to one's 

* " Of the Earl of Peterborough, Walpole says : — " He was one of those men of 
careless wit and nej^ligent grace, who scatter a thousand bon-mois and idle verses, 
which we painful compilers gather and hoard, till the authors stare to find themselves 
authors. Such was this lord, of an advantageous figure and enterprising spirit ; as 
gallant as Amadis and as brave ; but a little more expeditious in his journeys ; for he is 
said to have seen more kings and more postilions than any man in Europe. * * * 
He was a man, as his friend said, who would neither live nor die like any other 
mortal. 

" From the Earl of Peterborough to Pope. 

"You must receive my letters with a just impartiality, and give grains of allow- 
ance for a gloomy or rainy day ; I sink grievously with the weather-glass, and am quite 
spiritless when oppressed with the thoughts of a birthday or a return. 

" Dutiful affection was bringing mc to town ; but undutiful laziness, and being 
much out of order, keep me in the country : however, if alive, 1 must make my appear- 
ance at the birthday. * * * 

" You seem to think it vexatious that I shall allow you but one woman at a tin-e 
either to praise or love. If I dispute with you upon this point, I doubt every jury will 
give a verdict against me. So, sir, with a Mahometan indulgence, I allow you plural- 
ities, the favorite privilege of our church. 

" I find you don't mend upon correction ; again I tell you you must not think of 
women in a reasonable way ; you know we always make goddesses of those we adore 
upon earth ; and do not all the good men tell us we must lay aside reason in what 
relates to the Deity ? 

(( * * * J should have been glad of anything of Swift's. Pray, when you 
write to him next, tell him I expect him with impatience, in a place as odd and as 
much out of the way as himself. Yours.'' 

Peterborough married Miss Anastasia Robinson, the celebrated singer. 



480 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

door for visitors." So these great spirits spoke of one another. 
Show me six of the dullest middle-aged gentlemen that ever 
dawdled round a club table, so faithful and so friendly. 

We have said before that the chief wits of this time, with 
the exception of Congreve, were what we should now call men's 
men. They spent many hours of the four-and-twenty, a fourth 
part of each day nearly, in clubs and coffee-houses, where they 
dined, drank, and smoked. Wit and news went by word of 
mouth; a journal of 1710 contained the very smallest portion 
of one or the other The chiefs spoke, the faithful habitues sat 
round ; strangers came to wonder and listen. Old Dryden had 
his head-quarters at " Will's," in Russell Street, at the corner 
of Bow Street : at which place Pope saw him when he was 
twelve years old. The company used to assemble on the first 
floor — what was called the dining-room floor in those days — 
and sat at various tables smoking their pipes. It is recorded 
that the beaux of the day thought it a great honor to be allowed 
to take a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box. When Addison 
began to reign, he with a certain crafty propriety — a policy let 
us call it — which belonged to his nature, set up his court, and 
appointed the officers of his royal house. His palace was 
"Button's," opposite "Will's."* A quiet opposition, a silent 
assertion of empire, distinguished this great man. Addison's 
ministers were Budgell, Tickell, Phillips, Carey ; his master of 
the horse, honest Dick Steele, who was what Duroc was to 
Napoleon, or Hardy to Nelson ; the man who performed his 
master's bidding, and would have cheerfully died in his quarrel. 
Addison lived with these people for seven or eight hours every 
day. The male society passed over their punch-bowls and 
tobacco-pipes about as much time as ladies of that age spent 
over Spadille and IVIanille. 

For a brief space, upon coming up to town, Pope formed 
part of King Joseph's court, and was his rather too eager and 
obsequious humble servant.f Dick Steele, the editor of the 

* " Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's family, who, under the 
patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russell Street, about 
two doors from Covent Garden. Here it was that the wits of that time used to as- 
semble. It is said that when Addison had suffered any vexation from the Countess, 
he withdrew the company from Button's house. 

" From the coffee house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late and 
drank too much wine.'' — Dr. Johnson. 

Will's coffee-house was on the west side of Bow Street, and " corner of Russell 
Street." See " Handbook of London.'' 

t " My acquaintance with Mr. Addison commenced in 1712: I liked him then as 
well as I liked any man, and was very fond of his conversation. It was very soon after 
that Mr. Addison advised me 'not to be content with the applause of half the nation.' 
He used to talk much and often to me, of moderation in parties ; and used to blame 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 481 

Tatler, Mr. Addison's man, and his own man too, — a person or 
no little figure in the world of letters, patronized the young 
poet, and set him a task or two. Young Mr. Pope did the 
tasks very quickly and smartly (he had been at the feet, quite 
as a boy, of Wycherley's * decrepit reputation, and propped 
up for a year that doting old wit) : he was anxious to be well 
with the men of letters, to get a footing and a recognition. He 
thought it an honor to be admitted into their company ; to have 
the confidence of Mr Addison's friend. Captain Steele. His 
eminent parts obtained for him the honor of heralding Ad- 
dison's triumph of ** Cato " with his admirable prologue, and' 
heading the victorious procession as it were. Not content with. 
this act of homage and admiration, he wanted to distinguish 
himself by assaulting Addison's enemies, and attacked John- 
Dennis with a prose lampoon, which highly offended his lofty 

his dear friend Steele for being to much of a party man. He encouraged me in jay 
design of translating the ' Iliad,' which was begun that year, and finished in 171S.'.'— 
Pope. Spcnce's Anecdotes. 

" Addison had Budgell, and I think Phillips, in the house with him — Gay they 
would call one of my clcves. — They were angry with me for keeping so much with Dr. 
Swift and some of the late Ministry.'"— Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 

* " To Mr. Blount. 

"yan. 21, 1715-16. 

" I know of nothing that will be so interesting to you at present as some circum- 
sfences of the last act of that eminent comic poet and our friend, Wycherley. He had 
often told me, and 1 doubt not he d.d all his acquaintance, that he would marry as 
soon as his life was despaired of. Accordingly, a few days before his death, he under- 
went the ceremony, and joined together these two sacraments which wise men say we 
should be the last to receive ; for, if you observe, matrimony is placed after extreme 
unction in our catechism, as a kind of hint of the order of time in which they are to be 
taken. The old man then lay down, satisfied in the consciousness of having, by this 
one act, obliged a woman wlw (he was told) had merit, and shown an heroic resent- 
ment of the ill-usage of his next heir. Some hundred pounds which he had with the 
lady discharged his debts ; a jointure of 500/. a year made her a recompense ; and the 
nephew was left to comfort himself as well as he could with the miserable remains of 
mortgaged estate. I saw our friend twice after this was done — less peevish in his 
sickness than he used to be in his health ; neither much afraid of dying, nor (which in 
him had been more likely) much ashamed of marrying. The evening before he ex- 
pired, he called his young wife to his bedside, and earnestly entreated her not to deny 
him one request — the last he should make. Upon her assurances of consenting to it, 
he told her : " My dear, it is only this — that you will never marry an old man again. 
I cannot help remarking that sickness, which often destroys both wit and wisdom,, 
yet seldom has power to remove that talent which we call humor. Mr. Wycherley 
showed his even in his last compliment ; though I think his request a little hard, for- 
why should he bar her from doubling her jointure on the same easy terms ? 

" So trivial as these circumstances are, I should not be displeased myself to knovir 
such trifles when they concern or characterize any eminent person. The wisest and' 
wittiest of men are seldom wiser or wittier than others in these sober moments ; at 
least, our friend ended much in the same character he hid lived in ; and Horace's rule 
for play may as well be apphed to him as a playwright : — 

" ' Servetur ad imum 
Qualis ab Incepto processerit et sibi constet.' 

<' I am," §c« 

31 



482 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

patron. Mr. Steele was instructed to write to Mr. Dennis, and 
inform him that Mr. Pope's pamphlet against him was written 
quite without Mr. Addison's approval.* Indeed, " The Nar- 
rative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Phrenzy of J. D." is a vulgar 
and mean satire, and such a blow as the magnificent Addison 
could never desire to see any partisan of his strike in any 
literary quarrel. Pope was closely allied with Swift when he 
wrote this pamphlet. It is so dirty that it has been printed in 
Swift's works too. It bears the foul marks of the master hand. 
Swift admired and enjoyed with all his heart the prodigious 
genius of the young Papist lad out of Windsor Forest, who<had 
never seen a university in his life, and came and conquered the 
Dons and the doctors with his wit. He applauded and loved him, 
too, and protected him, and taught him mischief. I wish Ad- 
dison could have loved him better. The best satire that ever has 
been penned would never have been written then ; and one of 
the best characters the world ever knew would have been with- 
out a flaw. But he who had so few equals could not bear one, 
and Pope was more than that. When Pope, trying for himself, 
and soaring on his immortal young wings, found that his, too, 
was a genius, which no pinion of that age could follow, he rose 
and left Addison's company, settling on his own eminence, and 
singing his own song. 

It was not possible that Pope should remain a retainer or 
Mr. Addison ; nor likely that after escaping from his vassalage 
and assuming an independent crown, the sovereign whose alle- 
giance he quitted should view him amicably.! They did not 
do wrong to mislike each other. They but followed the impulse 
of nature, and the consequence of position. When Bernadotte 
became heir to a throne, the Prince Royal of Sweden was 
naturally Napoleon's enemy. " There are many passions and 
tempers of mankind," says Mr. Addison in the Spectator, speak- 
ing a couple of years before their little differences between him 
and Mr. Pope took place, " which naturally dispose us to de- 

* "Addison, who was no stranger to the world, probably saw the selfishness of 
Pope's friendship ; and resolving that he«should have the consequences of his officious- 
ness to himself, informed Dennis by Steele that he was sorry for the insult." — John- 
son : Life of Addison. 

t " While I was heated with what I heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison, to let 
him know ' that I was not unacquainted with this behavior of his ; that if I was to 
speak of him severely in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty way ; that I 
should rather tell him himself fairly of his faults, and allow his good qualities ; and 
that it should be something in the following manner.' I then subjoined the first 
sketch of what has since been called my satire on Addison. He used me very civily 
ever after ; and never did me any injustice, that I know of, from that time to his 
death, which was about three years after." — Pope. S^encc's Anecdotes, 



PRIOR, GA F, AND POPE. 483 

press and vilify the merit of one rising in the esteem of man- 
kind. All those who made their entrance into the world with 
the same advantages, and were once looked on as his equals, 
are apt to think the fame of his merits a reflection on their own 
deserts. Those who were once his equals envy and defame 
him, because they now see him the superior ; and those who 
were once his superiors, because they look upon him as their 
equal." Did Mr. Addison, justly perhaps thinking that, as 
young Mr. Pope had not had the benefit of a university educa- 
tion, he couldn't know Greek, therefore he couldn't translate 
Homer, encourage his young friend Mr. Tickell, of Queen's, 
to translate that poet, and aid him with his own known scholar- 
ship and skill ? " * It was natural that Mr. Addison should 
doubt of the learning of an amateur Grecian, should have a high 
opinion of Mr. Tickell, of Queen's, and should help that in- 
genious young man. It was natural, on the other hand, that 
Mr. Pope and Mr. Pope's friends should believe that this 
counter-translation, suddenly advertised and so long written, 
though Tickell's college friends had never heard of it — though, 
when Pope first wrote to Addison regarding his scheme, Mr. 
Addison knew nothing of the similar project of Tickell, of 
Queen's — it was natural that Mr. Pope and his friends, hav- 
ing interests, passions and prejudices of their own, should 
believe that Tickell's translation was but an act of opposition 
against Pope, and that they should call Mr. Tickell's emula- 
tion Mr. Addison's envy — if envy it were. 

"And were th;re one whose fires 
Tnie genius kindles and fair fame inspires, 
Blest with each talent and each heart to please, 
And born to write, converse, and live with ease ; 
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 
Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne ; 
View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes, 
And hate, for arts that caused himself to rise ; 
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; 
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike ; 
Alike reserved to blame as to commend, 
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend ; 
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, 
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged: 
Like Cato give his little senate laws, 
And sit attentive to his own applause ; 

* " That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly improba- 
ble ; that Addison should have been guilty of a villany seeins to us highly improljable J 
but that these two men should have conspired together to commit a villany, seems, to 
us, improbable in a tenfold degree." — Macau lay. 



^.84 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

While wits and templars every sentence raise, 
And wonder with a foolish face of praise ; 
Who but must laugh if such a man there be, 
Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? " 

" I sent the verses to Mr. Addison," said Pope, " and he 
used me very civilly ever after." No wonder he did. It was 
shame very likely more than fear that silenced him. Johnson 
recounts an interview between Pope and Addison after their 
quarrel, in which Pope was angry, and Addison tried to be con- 
temptuous and calm. Such a weapon as Pope's must have 
pierced any scorn. It flashes forever, and quivers in Ad- 
dison's memory. His great figure looks out on us from the 
past — stainless but for that — pale, and calm, and beauti- 
ful : it bleeds from that black wound. He should be drawn, 
like St. Sebastian, with that arrow in his side. As he sent 
to Gay and asked his pardon, 'as he bade his stepson come 
and see his death, be sure he had forgiven Pope, when he 
made ready to show how a Christian Qould die. 

Pope then formed part of the Addisonian court for a short 
time, and describes himself in his letters as sitting with that 
coterie unt'il two o'clock in the morning over punch and bur- 
gundy amidst the fumes of tobacco. To use an expression 
of the present day, the " pace " of those viveurs of the former 
age was awful. Peterborough lived into the very jaws of death \ 
Godolphin labored all day and gambled at night ; Boling- 
broke,* writing to Swift, from Dawley, in his retirement, dating 
his letter at six o'clock in the morning, and rising, as he 
says, refreshed, serene, and calm, calls to mind the time of 
his London life : when about that hour he used to be going 
to bed, surfeited with pleasure and jaded with business ; his 
head often full of schemes, and his heart as often full of 
anxiety. It was too hard, too coarse a life for the sensitive, 

* " Lord Bolingbroke to the Three Yahoos of Twickenham. 

'■'■July 23, 1726. 

" Jonathan, Alexander, John, most excellent Triumvirs of Par- 
nassus, — 

" Though you are probably very indifferent where I am, or what I am doing, yet 
I resolve to believe the contrary. I persuade myself that you have sent at least fif-« 
teen times within this fortnight to Dawley farm, and tliat you are extremely mortified 
at my long silence. To relieve you, therefore, from this great anxiety of mind, I can 
do no less than write a few lines to you ; and I please myself beforehand with the 
vast pleasure which this epistle must needs give you. That I may add to this pleas- 
ure, and give further proofs of my beneficent temper, I will likewise inform you, that 
I shall be in your neighborhood again, by the end of next week . by which time I 
hope that Jonathan's imagination of business will be succeeded by some imagination 
more becoming a professor of that divine science, la. bagatelle. Adieu. Jonathan, 
Alexander, John, mirth be with you ! " 



PRIOR, GAY, AXD POPE. 485 

sickly Pope, He was the only wit of the day, a friend writes 
to me, who wasn't fat.* Swift was fat ; Addison was fat ; 
Steele was fat ; Gay and Thomson were preposterously fat — 
all that fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee- 
house boozing, shortened the lives and enlarged the waist- 
coats of the men of that age. Pope withdrew in a great 
measure from this boisterous London company, and being put 
into an independence by the gallant exertions of Swift t and 
his private friends, and by the enthusiastic national admira- 
tion which justly rewarded his great achievement of the 
" Iliad," purchased that famous villa of Twickenham which 
his song and life celebrated ; duteously bringing his old parent 
to live and die there, entertaining his friends there, and making 
occasional visits to London in his little chariot, in which Atter- 
bury compared him to " Homer in a nutshell." 

" Mr. Dryden was not a genteel man," Pope quaintly said 
to Spence, speaking of the manner and habits of the famous old 
patriarch of " Will's." With regard to Pope's own manners, 
we have the best contemporary authority that they were sin- 
gularly refined and polished. With his extraordinary sensibility, 
with his known tastes, with his delicate frame, with his power 
and dread of ridicule, Pope could have been no other than what 
we call a highly-bred person. | His closest friends, with the 
exception of Swift, were among the delights and ornaments of 
the polished society of their age. Garth, § the accomplished 
and benevolent, whom Steele has described so charmingly, of 
whom Codrington said that his character was " all beauty," 
and whom Pope himself called the best of Christians without 
knowing it ; Arbuthnot, || one of the wisest, wittiest, most ac- 

* Prior must be excepted from this observation. " He was lank and lean." 

t Swift exerted himself very much in promoting the " Iliad " subscription ; and 
also introduced Pope to Harley and Bolingbroke. — Pope realized by the " Iliad " up- 
wards of 5,000/., which he laid out partly in annuities, and partly in the purchase of 
his famous villa. Johnson remarks that " it would be hard to find a man so well 
entitled to notice by his wit, that ever delighted so much in talking of his money." 

\ " His (Pope's) voice in common conversation was so naturally musical, that I 
remember honest Tom Southerne used always to call him ' the little nightingale.' " — 
Orrery. 

§ Garth, whom Dryden calls " generous as his Muse," was a Yorkshireman. He 
graduated at Cambridge, and was made M.D. in 1691. He soon distinguished him- 
self in his profession, by his poem of the " Dispensary," and m society, and pro- 
nounced Dryden's funeral oration. He was a strict Whig, a notable member of the 
" Kit-Cat,'' and a fnendl}-, convivial, able man. He was knighted by George I., with 
the Duke of Marlborough's sword. He died in 171S. 

II " Arbuthnot was the son of an episcopal clergyman in Scotland, and belonged 
to an ancient and distinguished Scotch family He was educated at Aberdeen ; and, 
coming up to London — according to a Scotch practice often enough alluded to — to 
make his fortune — first made himself known by ' An Examination of Dr. Wood- 
ward's Account of the Deluge.' He became physician successively to Prince George 



4.86 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

complished, gentlest of mankind ; Bolingbroke, the Alcibiades 
of his age ; the generous Oxford ; the magnificent, the witty, 
the famous, and chivalrous Peterborough : these were the fast 
and faithful friends of Pope, the most brilliant company of 
friends, let us repeat, that the world has ever seen. The fa- 

of Denmark and to Queen Anne. He is usually allowed to have been the most 
learned, as well as one of the most witty and humorous members of the Scriblerus 
Club. The opinion entertained of him by the humorists of the day is abundantly 
evidenced in their correspondence. When he found himself in his last illness, he 
wrote thus, from his retreat at Hampstead, to Swift ; — 

Hamp steady Oct. 4, 1734. 
" ' My Dear and Worthy Friend, — 

" ' You have no reason to put me among the rest of your forgetful friends, for 
I wrote two long letters to you, to which I never received one word of answer. The 
first was about your health ; the last I sent a great while ago, by one De la Mar. I 
can assure you with great truth that none of your friends or acquaintance has a more 
warm heart towards you than myself. I am going out of this troublesome world, and 
you. among the rest of my friends, shall have my last prayers and good wishes. 

i( I # * * I came out to this place so reduced by a dropsy and an asthma, that I 
could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move. I most earnestly desired and begged of 
God that he would take me. Contrary to my expectation, upon venturing to ride 
(which I had forborne for some years), I recovered my strength to a pretty considera- 
ble degree, slept, and had my stomach again. * * * What I did, I can assure you 
was not for life, but ease ; for I am at present in the case of a man that was almost in 
harbor, and then blown back to sea — who has a reasonable hope of going to a good 
place, and an absolute certainty of leaving a very bad one. Not that I have any par- 
ticular disgust at the world ; for I have as great comfort in my own family and from 
the kindness of my friends as any man ; but the world, in the main, displeases me, 
and 1 have too true a presentiment of calamities that are to befall my country. How- 
ever, if I should have the happiness to see you before I die, you will find that I enjoy 
the comforts of life with my usual cheerfulness. I cannot imagine why you are 
frightened from a journey to England : the reasons you assign are not sufficient — the 
journey I am sure would do you good. In general, I recommend riding, of which I 
have always had a good opinion, and can now confirm it from my own experience. 

" ' My family give you their love and service. The great loss I sustained in one 
of them gave me my first shock, and the trouble I have with the rest to bring them to 
a right temper to bear the loss of a father who loves them, and whom they love, is 
really a most sensible affliction to me. I am afraid, my dear friend, we shall never 
see one another more in this world. I shall, to the last moment, preserve my love 
and esteem for you, being well assured you will never leave the paths of virtue and 
honor ; for all that is in this world is not worth the least deviation from the way. It 
will be great pleasure to me to hear from you sometimes ; for none are with more 
sincerity than I am, my dear friend, your most faithful friend and humble servant." ' 

" Arbuthnot,'' Johnson says, " was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his 
profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to ani- 
mate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination ; a scholar with great 
brilliance of wit ; a wit wiio, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble 
ardor of religious zeal." 

Dugald Stewart has testified to Arbuthnot's ability in a department of which he 
was particularly qualified to judge : " Let me add, that, in the list of philosophical 
reformers, the authors of ' Martinus Scriblerus ' ought not to be overlooked. Their 
happy ridicule of the scholastic logic and metaphysics is universally known ; but few 
are aware of the acuteness and sagacity displayed in their allusions to some of the 
most vulnerable passages in Locke's ' Essay.' In this part of the work it is com- 
monly understood that Arbuthnot had the principal share." — See Preliminary Dis' 
sertation to EncyclopcEdia Britannica, note to p. 242, and also note B. b. b., p. 
2S5. 



PRIOR, GA V, AND POPE. 487 

vorite recreation of his leisure hours was the society of painters, 
whose art he practised. In his correspondence are letters 
between him and Jervas, whose pupil he loved to be — 
Richardson, a celebrated artist of his time, and who painted 
for him a portrait of his old mother, and for whose picture he 
asked r.nd thanked Richardson in one of the most delightful 
letters that ever was penned,* — and the wonderful Kneller, 
who bragged more, spelt worse, and painted better than any 
other artist of his day.f 

It is affecting to note, through Pope's Correspondence, 
the marked way in which his friends, the greatest, the most 
famous, and wittiest men of the time — generals and statesmen, 
philosophers and divines — all have a kind word and a kind 
thought for the good simple old mother, whom Pope tended so 
affectionately. Those men would have scarcely valued her, 
but that they knew how much he loved her, and that they 
pleased him by thinking of her. If his early letters to women 
are affected and insincere, whenever he speaks about this one, 
it is with a childish tenderness and an almost sacred simplicity. 
In 1 7 13, when young Mr. Pope had, by a series of the most 
astonishing victories and dazzling achievements, seized the 
crown of poetry, and the town was in an uproar of admiration, 
or hostiUty, for the young chief ; when Pope, was issuing his 
famous decrees for the translation of the " Iliad ; " when Dennis 
and the lower critics were hooting and assailing him ; when 
Addison and the gentlemen of his court were sneering with 

* " To Mr. Richardson. 

Twickenham^yune 10, 1733. 

" As I know you and I mutually desire to see one another, 1 hope that this day 
our wishes would have met, and brouglit you hither. And this for the very reason, 
which possibly might hinder you coming, that my poor mother is dead. I thank 
God, her death was as easy as her life was innocent ; and as it cost her not a groan, 
or even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an expression oi tranquillity, 
nay, almost of pleasure, that it is even amiable to behold it. It would afford the 
finest image of a saint expired that ever painting drew ; and it would be the greatest 
obligation which even that obliging art could ever bestow on a friend, if you could 
come and sketcli it for me. I am sure, if there be no very prevalent obstacle, you 
will leave any common business to do this ; and I hope to see you this evening, as 
late as you will, or to-morrow morning as early, before this winter flower is faded. I 
will defer her interment till to-morrow night. I know you love me, or I could not 
have writen this — I could not (at this time) have written at all. Adieu ! May you 
die as happily ! Yours," &c. 

t " Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, a Guinea 
trader, came in. ' Nephew,' said Sir Godfrey, ' you have the honor of seeing the two 
greatest men in the world.' — ' I don't know how great you may be,' said the Guinea 
man, ' but I don't like your looks : I have often bought a man ijiuch better than both 
of you together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas.' " — Dr. Warburton. 
Spencers Anecdotes, 



488 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

sickening hearts at the prodigious triumphs of the young con- 
queror ; when Pope, in a fever of victory, and genius, and hope, 
and anger was struggling through the crowd of shouting friends 
and furious detractors to his temple of Fame, his old mother 
writes from the country, " My deare," says she — " My deare, 
there's Mr. Blount, of Mabel Durom, dead the same day that 
Mr. Inglefield died. Your sister is well ; but your brother is 
sick. My service to Mrs. Blount, and all that ask of me. I 
hope to hear from you, and that you are well, which is my daily 
prayer ; and this with my blessing." The triumph marches by, 
and the car of the young conqueror, the hero of a hundred 
brilliant victories : the fond mother sits in the quiet cottage at 
home and says, " I send you my daily prayers ; and I bless you, 
my deare." 

In our estimate of Pope's character, let us always take into 
account that constant tenderness and fidelity of affection whicK 
pervaded and sanctified his life, and ne^ver forgot that maternal 
benediction.* It accompanied him always : his life seems 
purified by those artless and hearfelt prayers. And he seems 
to have received and deserved the fond attachment of the other 
niembers of his family. It is not a little touching to read in 
Spence of the enthusiastic admiration with which his half-sister 
regarded him, and the simple anecdote by which she illustrates 
her love. "I think no man was ever so little fond of money." 
Mrs. Rackett says about her brother, " I think my brother when 
he was young read more books than any man in the world ; " and 
she falls to telling stories of his school-days, and the manner in 
which his master at Twyford ill-used him. " I don't think my 
brother knew what fear was," she continues ; and the accounts of 
Pope's friends bear out this character for courage. When he 
had exasperated the dunces, and threats of violence and per- 
sonal assault were brought to him, the dauntless little champion 
never for one instant allowed fear to disturb him, or conde- 
scended to take any guard in his daily walks, except occasion- 
ally his faithful dog to bear him company. " I had rather die 
at once," said the gallant little cripple, " than live in fear of 
those rascals." 

* Swift's mention of him as one 

" whose filial piety excels 

Whatever Grecian story tells," 

is well known. And a sneer of Walpole's may be put to a better use than he ever 
intended it for, (V-//-o/»>5 of this subject. — He charitably sneers, in onex)f his letters, at 
Spence's " fondling an old mother — in imitation of Pope ! " 



PRIOR, GA V, AND POPE. 489 

As for his death, it was what the noble Arbuthnot asked 
and enjoyed for himself — a euthanasia — a beautiful end. A 
perfect benevolence, affection, serenity, hallowed the departure 
of that high soul. Even in the very hallucinations of his brain, 
and weaknesses of his delirium, there was something ahnost 
sacred. Spence describes him in his last days, looking up and 
with a rapt gaze as if something had suddenly passed before 
him. " He said to me, * What's that ? ' pointing into the air 
with a very steady regard, and then looked down and said, with 
a smile of the greatest softness, " 'Twas a vision ! " He 
laughed scarcely ever, but his companions describe his coun- 
tenance as often illuminated by a peculiar sweet smile. 

"When," said Spence,* the kind anecdotistwhom Johnson 
despised — " When I was telling Lord Bolingbroke that Mr. 
Pope, on every catching and recovery of his mind, was always 
saying something kindly of his present or absent friends ; and 
that this was so surprising, as it seemed to me as if humanity 
had outlasted understanding. Lord Bolingbroke said, ' It has 
so,' and then added, * I never in my life knew a man who had 
so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general 
friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years, 

and value myself more for that man's love than ' Here," 

Spence says, " St. John sunk his head, and lost his voice in 
tears." The sob which finishes the epitaph is finer than words, 
it is the cloak thrown over the father's face in the famous 
Greek picture, which hides the grief and heightens it. 

In Johnson's " Life of Pope " you will find described, with 
rather a malicious minuteness, some of the personal habits and 
infirmities of the great little Pope. His body was crooked, he 
was so short that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to 
place him on a level with other people at table. f He was 
sewed up in a buckram suit every morning and required a nurse 

* Joseph Spence was the son of a clergyman, near Winchester. He was a short 
time at Eton, and afterwards became a FeliOw of New College, Oxford, a clergyman, 
and professor of poetry. He was a friend of Thomson's, whose reputation he aided. 
He published an " Essay on the Odyssey " in 1726, which introduced him to Pope. 
Everybody liked him. His " Anecdotes '' were placed, while still in MS., at the 
service of Johnson and also of Malone. They were published by Mr. Singer in 
1S20. 

t He speaks of Arbuthnot's having helped him through " that long disease, my 
life." But not only was he so feeble as is implied in his use of the '' buckram," but " it 
now appears,'' says Mr. Peter Cunningham, "from his unpublished letters, that, like 
Lord Hervey, he had recourse to ass's-milk for the preservation of his health." It is 
to his lordship's use of that simple beverage that he alludes when he says — 

" Let Sporus tremble ! — A. What, that thing of silk, 
Sporus, that mere white-curd of ass's milk ? " 



49° 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



like a child. His contemporaries reviled these misfortunes 
with a strange acrimony, and made his poor deformed person 
the butt for many a bolt of heavy wit. The facetious Mr. 
Dennis, in speaking of him, says, " If you take the first letter 
of Mr. Alexander Pope's Christian name, and the first and last 
letters of his surname, you have A. P. E." Pope catalogues, 
at the end of the Dunciad, with a rueful precision, other pretty 
names, besides Ape, which Dennis called him. That great 
critic pronounced Mr. Pope as a little ass, a fool, a coward, a 
Papist, and therefore a hater of Scripture, and so forth. It 
must be remembered that the Pillory was a flourishing and 
popular institution in those days. Authors stood in it in the 
body sometimes : and dragged their enemies thither morally, 
hooted them with foul abuse, and assailed them with garbage 
of the gutter. Poor Pope's figure was an easy one for those 
clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid hand could draw a 
hunchback, and write Pope underneath. They did. A libel 
was published against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This 
kind of rude jesting was an evidence not only of an ill-nature. 
but a dull one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks 
out into a laugh, it is some very obvious combination of words, 
or discrepancy of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, 
or tickles the boorish wag ; and many of Pope's revilers 
laughed, not so much because they were wicked, as because 
they knew no better. 

Without the utmost sensibility. Pope could not have been 
the poet he was ; and through his life, however much he pro- 
tested that he disregarded their abuse, the coarse ridicule of 
his opponents stung and tore him. One of Gibber's pamphlets 
coming into Pope's hands, whilst Richardson the painter was 
with him. Pope turned round and said, " These things are my 
diversions ; " and Richardson, sitting by whilst Pope perused 
the libel, said he saw his features " writhing with anguish." 
How little human nature changes ! Can't one see that little 
figure .'' Can't one fancy one is reading Horace .-' Can't one 
fancy one is speaking of to-day .'' 

The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which led him to cul- 
tivate the society of persons of fine manners, or wit, or taste, 
or beauty, caused him to shrink equally from that shabby and 
boisterous crew which formed the rank and file of literature 
in his time : and he was as unjust to these men as they to him. 
The delicate little creature sickened at habits and company 
which were quite tolerable to robuster men : and in the famous 
feud between Pope and the Dunces, and without attributing 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 4^1 

any peculiar wrong to either, one can quite understand how the 
two parties should so hate each other. As I fancy, it was a 
sort of necessity that when Pope's triumph passed, Mr. Ad- 
dison and his men should look rather contemptuously down on 
it from their balcony ; so it was natural for Dennis and Tib> 
bald, and Welsted and Gibber, and the worn and hungry press> 
men in the crowd below, to howl at him and assail him. And 
Pope was more savage to Grub Street than Grub Street was 
to Pope. The thong with which he lashed them was dreadful \ 
he fired upon that howling crew such shafts of flame and 
poison, he slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the 
" Dunciad " and the prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed 
to side against the ruthless little tyrant, at least to pity those 
wretched folks upon whom he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, 
and Swift to aid him, who established among us the Grub Street 
tradition. He revels in base descriptions of poor men's want ; 
he gloats over poor Dennis's garret, and flannel-nightcap, 
and red stockings ; he gives instructions how to find Curll's 
authors, the historian at the tallow-chandler's under the blind 
arch in Petty France, the two translators in bed together, the 
poet in the cock-loft in Budge Row, whose landlady keeps the 
ladder. It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, more than any 
man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary calling. It was 
not an unprosperous one before that time, as we have seen \ 
at least there were great prizes in the profession which had 
made Addison a Minister, and Prior an Ambassador, and 
Steele a Commissioner, and Swift all but a Bishop. The pro- 
fession of letters was ruined by that libel of the " Dunciad." 
If authors were wretched and poor before, if some of them 
lived in haylofts, of which their landladies kept the ladders, at 
least nobody came to disturb them in their straw ; if three ol 
them had but one coat between them, the two remained invis- 
ible in the garret, the third, at any rate, appeared decently at 
the coffee-house and paid his twopence like a gentleman. It 
was Pope that dragged into light all this poverty and mean- 
ness, and held up those wretched shifts and rags to public 
ridicule. It was Pope that has made generations of the reading 
world (delighted with the mischief, as who would not be that read 
it ?) believe that author and wretch, author and rags, author 
and dirt, author and drink, gin, cow-heel, tripe, poverty, duns, 
bailiffs, squalling children and clamorous landladies, were always 
associated together. The condition of authorship began to fall 
from the days of the " Dunciad : " and I believe in my heart 
that much of that obloquy which has since pursued our calling 



492 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



was occasioned by Pope's libels and wicked wit. Everybody 
read those. Everybody was familiarized with the idea of the 
poor devil, the author. The manner is so captivating that 
young authors practise it, and begin their career with satire. 
It is so easy to write, and so pleasant to read ! to fire a shot 
that makes a giant wince, perhaps; and fancy one's self his 
conqueror. It is easy to shoot — but not as Pope did. The 
shafts of his satire rise sublimely : no poet's verse ever mounted 
higher than that wonderful flight with which the " Dunciad " 
concludes : — * 

" She comes, she comes ! the sable throne behold 
Of Night primeval and of Chaos old; 
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, 
And all its varying rainbows die away ; 
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires. 
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. 
As, one by one, at dread Medea's strain 
The sick'ning stars fade off the ethereal plain ; 
As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd, 
Closed, one by one, to everlasting rest ; — 
Thus, at her felt approach and secret might, 
Art after Art goes out, and all is night. 
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled. 
Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head ; 
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before. 
Shrinks to her second cause and is no more. 
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, 
And, unawares, Morality expires. 
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, 
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. 
Lo ! tliy dread empire, Chaos, is restored, 
Light dies before thy uncreating word ; 
Thy liand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, 
And universal darkness buries all." t 

• 

In these astonishing lines Pope reaches, I think, to the very 
greatest height which his sublime art has attained, and shows 
himself the equal of all poets of all times. It is the brightest 
ardor, the loftiest assertion of truth, the most generous wisdom, 
illustrated by the noblest poetic figure, and spoken in words 
the aptest, grandest, and most harmonious. It is heroic courage 
speaking : a splendid declaration of righteous wrath and war. 
It is the gage flung down, and the silver trumpet ringing defi- 
ance to falsehood aad tyranny, deceit, dulness, superstition. It 
is Truth, the champion, shining and intrepid, and fronting the 

* " He (Johnson) repeated to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding 
lines of the ' Dunciad.' " — Boswell. 

t " Mr. Langton informed me that he on':e related to Johnson (on the authority 
of Spence), that Pope himself achnired these lines so much that when he repeated 
them his voice faltered. ' And well it might, sir,' said Johnson, ' for they are noble 
lines.' " — J. Boswell, junior. 



PRIOR, GA V, AND POPE. 



493 



great world-tyrant with armies of slaves at his back. It is a 
wonderful and victorious single combat, in that great battle, 
which has always been waging since society began. 

In speaking of a work of consummate art one does not try 
to show what it actually is, for that were vain ; but what it is 
like, and what are the sensations produced in the mind of him 
who views it. And in considering Pope's admirable career, I 
am forced into similitudes drawn from other courage and great- 
ness, and into comparing him with those who achieved triumphs 
in actual war, I think of the works of young Pope as I do of 
the actions of young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their 
common life you will find frailties and meannesses, as great as 
the vices and follies of the meanest men. But in the presence 
of the great occasion, the great soul flashes out, and conquers 
transcendent. In thinking of the splendor of Pope's young 
victories, of his merit, unequalled as his renown, I hail and 
salute the achieving genius, and do homage to the pen of a 
hero. 



494 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FLELDING. 

I SUPPOSE, as long as novels last and authors aim at interest- 
ing their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous 
and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty 
girl who finds a champion ; bravery and virtue conquer beauty ; 
and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of 
pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice 
overtakes him and honest folks come by their own. There 
never was perhaps a greatly popular story hut this simple plot 
was carried through it : mere satiric wit is addressed to a class 
of readers and thinkers quite different to those simple souls 
who laugh and weep over the novel. I fancy very few ladies 
indeed, for instance, could be brought to like " Gulliver " 
heartily, and (putting the coarseness and difference of manners 
out of the question) to relish the wonderful satire of "Jona- 
than Wild." In that strange apologue the author takes for a 
hero the greatest rascal, coward, traitor, tyrant, hypocrite, that 
his wit and experience, both large in this matter, could enable 
him to devise or depict ; he accompanies this villain through 
all the actions of his life, with a grinning deference and a won- 
derful mock respect : and doesn't leave him, still he is dangling 
at the gallows, when the satirist makes him a low bow and 
wishes the scoundrel good-day. 

It was not by satire of this sort, or by scorn and contempt, 
that Hogarth achieved his vast popularity and acquired his rep- 
utation.* His art is quite simple,! he speaks popular parables 

* Coleridge speaks of the "beautiful female faces'' in Hogarth's pictures, " in 
whom,'' he says, " the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty which belonged 
to him as a poet." — The Friend. 

t " I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who. being asked which book he 
esteemed most in his library, answered ' Shakspeare ' being asked which he es- 
teemed next best, replied ' Hogarth. ' His graphic representations are indeed books : 
they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look 
at — his prints we read, i^ * * * 

" The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture would almost 
unvulgarize every subject which he might choose. » * * * 

" i say not that all the ridiculous subjects of Hogarth have necessarily something 
in them to make us like them ; some are indifferent to us, some in their nature repul- 
sive, and only made interesting by the wonderful skill and truth to nature in the 
painter ; but I contend that there is in most of them that sprinkling of the better na- 
ture, which, like holy water, chases away and disperses the contagion of the bad. 
They have this in them, besides, that they bring us acquainted with the every-day 
human face, — they give us skill to detect those gradations of sense and virtue (which 
escape the careless or fastidious observer) in the circumstances of the world about us j 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 4^5 

to interest simple hearts, and to inspire tliem with pleasure 
or pity or warning and terror. Not one of his tales but is as 
easy as " Goody Twoshoes ; " it is the moral of Tommy was 
a naughty boy and the master flogged him, Jacky was a good 
boy and had plumcake, which pervades the whole works of the 
homely and famous English moralist. And if the moral is 
written in rather too large letters after the fable, we must re- 
member how simple the scholars and schoolmaster both were, 
and like neither the less because they are so artless and honest. 
" It was a maxim of Dr. Harrison's," Fielding says, in " Amelia," 
— speaking of the benevolent divine and philosopher who rep- 
resents the good principle in that novel — " that no man can 
descend below himself, in doing any act which may contribute 
to protect an innocent person, or to bring a rogue to the gallows. ^^ 
The moralists of that age had no compunction, you see ; they 
had not begun to be skeptical about the theory of punishment, 
and thought that the hanging of a thief was a spectacle for 
edification. Masters sent their apprentices, fathers took their 
children, to see Jack Sheppard or Jonathan Wild hanged, and 
it was asundoubting subscribers to this moral law," that Fielding 
wrote and Hogarth painted. Except in one instance, where, 
in the madhouse scene in the " Rake's Progress," the girl 

and prevent that disgust at common life, that iadimn qiiotidiajiaritm formarum 
which an unrestricted passion for ideal forms and beauties is in danger of producing. 
In this, as in many other things,vthey are analogous to the best novels of Smollett 
and Fielding.'' — Charles Lamb. 

" It has been observed that Hogarth's pictures are exceedingly unlike any other 
representations of the same kind of subjects — that they form a class, and have a 
character, peculiar to themselves. It may be worth while to consider in what this gen- 
eral distinction consists. 

"In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, historical pictures ; and if 
what Fielding says be true, that his novel of ' Tom Jones' ought to be regarded as an 
epic prose-poem, because it contained a regular develi^pment of fable; manners, char- 
acter, and passion, the compositions of Hogarth wi!], m like manner, be found to have 
a higher claim to the title of epic pictures than many which have of late arrogated 
that denomination to themselves. When we say that Hogarth treated his subject 
historically, we mean that his works represent the manners and humors of mankind 
in action, and their characters by varied expression. Everything in his pictures has 
life and motion in it. Not only does the business of the scene never stand still, but 
every feature and muscle is put into full play ; the exact feeling of the moment is 
brought out, and carried to its utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped 
on the canvas forever. The expression is always taken en fassani, in a state of pro- 
gress or change, and, as it were, at the salient point. * * * * His figures are not 
like the back-ground on which they are painted : even the pictures on the wall have a 
peculiar look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history, 
Hogarth's heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits. He gives the ex- 
tremes of character and expression, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. 
This is, in fact, what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same 
kind, that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere still life. * * » 
His faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single 
instance) go beyond it." — Hazlitt. 



496 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

whom he has ruined is represented as still tending and weep- 
ing over him in his insanity, a glimpse of pity for his rogues 
never seems to enter honest Hogarth's mind. There's not the 
slightest doubt in the breast of the jolly Draco. 

The famous set of pictures called " Marriage k la Mode," 
and which are now exhibited in the National Gallery in London, 
contains the most important and highly wrought of the Ho- 
garth comedies. The care and method with which the moral 
grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit 
and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to 
describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between the 
daughter of a rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount 
Squanderfield, the dissipated son of a gouty old Earl. Pride 
and pomposity appear in every accessory surrounding the Earl. 
He sits in gold lace and velvet — as how should such an Earl 
wear anything but velvet and gold lace ? His coronet is every- 
where : on his footstool, on which reposes one gouty toe turned 
out ; on the sconces and looking-glass ; on the dogs ; on his 
lordship's very crutches ; on his great chair of state and the 
great baldaquin behind him ; under which he sits pointing ma- 
jestically to his pedigree, which shows that his race is sprung 
from the loins of William the Conqueror, and confronting the 
old Alderman from the City, who has mounted his sword for 
the occasion, and wears his Alderman's chain, and has brought 
a bag full of money, mortgage-deeds, and thousand-pound notes, 
for the arrangement of the transaction pending between them. 
Whilst the steward (a Methodist — therefore a hypocrite and 
cheat : for Hogarth scorned a Papist and a Dissenter,) is nego- 
tiating between the old couple, their children sit together, united 
but apart. My lord is admiring his countenance in the glass, 
while his bride is twiddling her marriage ring on her pocket- 
handkerchief, and listening with rueful countenance to Coun- 
sellor Silvertongue, who has been drawing the settlements. 
The girl is pretty, but the painter, with a curious watchfulness, 
has taken care to give her a likeness to her father ; as in the 
young Viscount's face you see a resemblance to the Earl, his 
noble sire. The sense of the coronet pervades the picture, as 
it is supposed to do the mind of its wearer. The pictures 
round the room are sly hints indicating the situation of the 
parties about to marry. A martyr is led to the fire ; Androm- 
eda is offered to sacrifice ; Judith is going to slay Holofernes. 
There is the ancestor of the house (in the picture it is the Earl 
himself as a young man), with a comet over his head, indica- 
ting that the career of the family is to be brilliant and brief. In 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 497 

the second picture, the old lord must be dead, for Madam has 
now the Countess's coronet over her bed and toilet-glass, 
and, sits listening to that dangerous Counsellor Silvertongue, 
whose portrait now actually hangs up in her room, whilst the 
counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by her side, evidently the 
familiar of the house, and the confidant of the mistress. My 
lord takes his pleasure elsewhere than at home, whither he re- 
turns jaded and tipsy from the " Rose," to find his wife yawning 
in her drawing-roojii, her whist-party over, and the daylight 
streaming in ; or he amuses himself with the very worst com- 
pany abroad, whilst his wife sits at home listening to foreign 
singers, or wastes her money at auctions, or, worse still, seeks 
amusement at masquerades. The dismal end is known. I\Iy 
lord draws upon the counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended 
whilst endeavoring to escape. My lady goes back perforce to 
to the Alderman in the City, and faints upon reading Counseller 
Silvertongue's dying speech at Tyburn, where the counsellor 
has been executed for sending his lordship out of the world. 
Moral : — don't listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors : don't 
marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money ; don't fre- 
quent foolish auctions and masquerade balls unknown to your 
husband : don't have wicked companions abroad and neglect 
your wife, otherwise you will be run through the body, and ruin 
will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn. The people are all 
naughty, and I"o;ey carries them all off. In the " Rake's Pro- 
gress," a loose life is ended by a similar sad catastrophe. It is 
the spendthrift coming into possession of the wealth of the pa- 
ternal miser ; the prodigal surrounded by flatterers, and wasting 
his substance on the very worst company ; the bailiffs, the gam- 
bling-house, and Bedlam for an end. In the famous story of 
" Industiy and Idleness," the moral is pointed in a manner 
similarly clear. Fair-haired Frank Goodchild smiles at his 
work, whilst naughty Tom Idle snores over his loom. Frank 
reads the edifying ballads of " Whittington " and the " London 
'Prentice," whilst that reprobate Tom Idle prefers " Moll 
Flanders," and drinks hugely of beer. Frank goes to church 
of a Sunday, and warbles hymns from the gallery ; while Tom 
lies on a toiigbstone outside playing at "halfpenny-under-the- 
hat " with street blackguards, and is deservedly caned by the 
beadle. Frank is made overseer of the business, whilst Tom is 
sent to sea. Frank is taken into partnership and marries his 
master's daughter, sends out broken victuals to the poor, and 
listens in his nightcap and gown, with the lovely Mrs. Good- 
child by his side, to the nuptial music of the City bands and 

32 



498 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

the marrow-bones and cleavers ; whilst Idle Tom, returned 
from sea, shudders in a garret lest the officers are coming to 
take him for picking pockets. The Worshipful Francis Good- 
child, Esq., becomes Sheriff of London, and partakes of the 
most splendid dinners which money can purchase or Alderman 
devour ; whilst poor Tom is taken up in a night-cellar, with 
that one-eyed and disreputable accomplice who first taught him 
to play chuck-farthing on a Sunday. What happens next ? 
Tom is brought up before the justice of his country, in the per- 
son of Mr. Alderman Goodchild, who weeps as he recognizes 
his old brother 'prentice, as Tom's one-eyed friend peaches on 
him, and the clerk makes out the poor rogue's ticket for New- 
gate. Then the end comes. Tom goes to Tyburn in a cart 
with a coffin in it ; whilst the Right Honorable Francis 
Goodchild, Lord Mayor of London, proceeds to his Mansion 
House, in his gilt coach with four footmen and a sword-bearer,, 
whilst the Companions of London march in the august jDroces- 
sion, whilst the trainbands of the City fire their pieces and get 
drunk in his honor ; and — O crowning delight and glory of all 
— whilst his Majesty the King looks out from his royal balcony, 
with his ribbon on his breast, and his Queen and his star by 
his side, at the corner house of St. Paul's Churchyard. 

How the times have changed ! The new post office now 
not disadvantageously occupies that spot where the scaffolding 
is in the picture, where the tipsy trainband-man is lurching 
against the post, with his wig over one eye, and the 'prentice- 
boy is trying to kiss the pretty girl in the gallery. Passed away 
'prentice-boy and pretty girl ! Passed away tipsy trainband-man 
with wig and bandolier.-' On the spot where Tom Idle (for 
whom I have an unaffected pity made his exit from this wicked 
world, and where you see the hangman smoking his pipe as he 
reclines on the gibbet and views the hills of Harrow or Hamp- 
stead beyond, a splendid marble arch, a vast and modern city 
— clean, airy, painted drab, populous with nursery-maids and 
children, the abode of wealth and comfort — the elegant, the 
prosperous, the polite Tyburnia rises, the most respectable 
district in the habitable globe ! 

In that last plate of the London Apprentices, in which the 
apotheosis of the Right Honorable Francis Goodchild is drawn, 
a ragged fellow is represented in the corner of the simple, 
kindly piece, offering for sale a broadside, purporting to con- 
tain an account of the appearance of the ghost of Tom Idle, 
executed at Tyburn. Could Tom's ghost have made its ap- 
pearance in 1847, and not in 1747, what changes would have 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 495 

been remarked by that astonished escaped criminal ! Over 
that road which the hangman used to travel constantly, and 
the Oxford stage twice a week, go ten thousand carriages every 
day ; over yonder road, by which Dick Turpin fled to Windsor, 
and Squire Western journeyed into town, when he came to 
take up his quarters at the " Hercules Pillars " on the outskirts 
of London, what a rush of civilization and order flows now ! 
What armies of gentlemen with umbrellas march to banks, and 
chambers, and counting-houses ! What regiments of nursery- 
maids and pretty infantry ; what peaceful processions of police- 
men, what light broughams and what gay carriages, what swanns 
of busy apprentices and artificers, riding on omnibus-roofs, 
pass daily and hourly ! Tom Idle's times are quite changed : 
many of the institutions gone into disuse which were admired 
in his day. There's more pity and kindness and a better 
chance for poor Tom's successors now than at that simpler 
period when Fielding hanged him and Hogarth drew him. 

To the student of history, these admirable works must be 
invaluable, as they give us the most complete and truthful pic- 
ture of the manners, and even the thoughts, of the past cen- 
tury. We look, and see pass before us the England of a 
hundred years ago — the peer in his drawing-room, the lady of 
fashion in her apartment, foreign singers surrounding her, and 
the chambers filled with gewgaws in the mode of that day ; the 
church, with its quaint florid architecture and singing congre- 
gation ; the parson with his great wig, and the beadle with his 
cane ; all these are represented before us, and we are sure of 
the truth of the portrait. We see how the Lord Mayor dines 
in state ; how the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio ; 
how the poor girl beats hemp in Bridewell ; how the chief di- 
vides his booty and drinks his punch at the night-cellar, and 
how he finishes his career at the gibbet. We may depend on 
the perfect accuracy of these strange and varied portraits of 
the by-gone generation : we see one of Walpole's Members of 
Parliament chaired after his election, and the lieges celebrating 
the event, and drinking confusion to the Pretender; we see the 
grenadiers and the trainbands of the City marching out to meet 
the enemy ; and have before us, with sword and firelock, and 
white Hanoverian horse embroidered on the cap, the very fig- 
ures of the men who ran away with Johnny Cope, and who con- 
quered at Culloden, The Yorkshire wagon rolls into the inn 
yard ; the country parson, in his jack-boots, and his bands and 
short cassock, comes trotting into town, and we fancy it is Par- 
son Adams, with his sermons in his pocket. The Salisbury fly 



500 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



sets forth from the old " Angel " — you see the passengers en-' 
tering the great heavy vehicle, up the wooden steps, their hats 
tied down with handkerchiefs over their faces, and under their 
arms, sword, hanger, and case-bottle ; the landlady — apoplectic 
with the liquors in her own bar — is tugging at the bell ; the 
hunchbacked postilion — he may have ridden the leaders to Hum- 
phrey Clinker — is begging a gratuity ; the miser is grumbling at 
the bill ; Jack of the " Centurion " lies on the top of the clumsy 
vehicle, with a soldier by his side — it may be Smollet's Jack 
Hatchway — it has a likeness to Lismahago. You see the 
suburban fair and the strolling company of actors ; the pretty 
milkmaid singing under the window of the enraged French 
musician : it is such a girl as Steele charmingly described in 
the Guardian, a few years before this date, singing, under Mr. 
Ironside's window in Shire Lane, her pleasant carol of a May 
morning. You see noblemen and blacklegs bawling and bet- 
ting in the Cockpit ; you see Garrick as he was arrayed in 
*' King Richard ; " Macheath and Polly in the dresses which 
they wore when they charmed our ancestors, and when noble- 
men in blue ribbons sat on the stage and listened to their de- 
lightful music. You see the ragged French soldiery, in their 
white coats and cockades, at Calais Gate : they are of the regi- 
ment, very likely, which friend Roderick Random joined be- 
fore he was rescued by his preserver Monsieur de Strap, with 
whom he fought on the famous day of Dettingen. You see the 
judges on the bench ; the audience laughing in the pit ; the 
student in the Oxford theatre ; the citizen on his country walk ; 
you see Broughton the boxer, Sarah Malcolm the murderess, 
Simon Lovat the traitor, John Wilkes the demagogue, leering 
at you with that squint which has become historical, and that 
face which, ugly as it was, he said he could make as captivating 
to woman as the countenance of the handsomest beau in town. 
All these sights and people are with you. After looking in the 
"Rake's progress" at Hogarth's picture of St. James's Palace 
Gate, you may people the street, but little altered within these 
hundred years, with the gilded carriages and thronging chair- 
men that bore the courtiers of your ancestors to Queen Caro- 
line's drawing-room more than a hundred years ago. 

What manner of man * was he who executed these portraits 

* Hogarth (whose family name was Hogart) was the grandson of a Westmoreland 
yeoman. His father came to London, and was an author and schoolmaster. Wil- 
liam was born in 1698 (according to the most probable conjecture) in the parish of St. 
Martin Ludgate. He was early apprenticed to an engraver of arms on plate. The 
following touches are from his " Anecdotes of Himself." (Edition of 1S33.) — 

" As I had naturally a good eye, and a fondness for drawing, shows of all sorts 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 501 

■ — SO various, so faithful, and so admirable ? In the National 
Collection of Pictures most of us have seen the best and most 

gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant ; and mimicry, common to all children, 
was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighboring painter drew my attention 
from play ; and I was, at every possible opportunity, employed in making drawings. 
1 picked up an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learnt to draw the alphabet 
with great correctness. My exercises, when at school, were more remarkable for the 
ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercise itself. In the former, I soon 
found that blockheads with better memories could much surpass me ; but for the 
latter I was particularly distinguished. * * * * 

" I thought it still more unlikely that by pursuing the common method, and copy- 
ing old drawings, I could ever attain the power of making new designs, which was my 
first and greatest ambition. I therefore endeavored to habituate myself to the exer- 
cise of a sort of technical memory ; and by repeating in my own mind the parts of 
which objects were composed, I could by degrees combine and put them down with 
my pencil. Thus, with all the drawbacks which resulted from the circumstances I 
have mentioned, I had one material advantage over my competitors, viz. : the early 
habit I thus acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying it on the 
spot, whatever I intended to imitate. 

" The instant I became master of my own time, I determined to qualify myself 
for engraving on copper. In this I readily got employment ; and frontispieces to 
books, such as prints to ' Hudibras,' in twelves, &c., soon brought me into the way. 
But the tribe of booksellers remained as my father liad left them * * * * which 
put me upon publishing on my own account. But here again I had to encounter a 
monopoly of printsellers, equally mean and destructive to the ingenious ; for the first 
plate I published, called ' The Taste of the Town,' in which the reigning follies were 
lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, than I found copies of it in the print-shops, 
vending at half-price, while the original prints were returned to me again, and I was 
thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there 
was no place of sale but at their shops. Owing to this, and other circumstances, by 
engraving, until I was near thirty, I could do little more than maintain myself ; but 
even then, I was a punctual paymaster. 

" I then married, and — — " 

[But William is going too fast here. He made " a stolen union,'' on March 23, 
1729, with Jane, daughter of Sir James Thornhill, sergeant-painter. For some 
time Sir James kept his heart and his purse-strings close, but " soon after became 
both reconciled and generous to the young couple." — Hogarth's Works, by 
Nichols and Steevens, vol. i. p. 44.] 

" — commenced painter of small Conversation Pieces, from twelve to fifteen inches 
high. This, being a novelty, succeeded for a few years." 

[About this time Hogarth had summer lodgings at South Lambeth, and did all 
kinds of work, " embellishing " the " Spring Gardens '' at " Vauxhall,'' and the like. 
In 1731, he published a satirical plate against Pope, founded on the well-known impu- 
tation against him of his having satirized the Duke of Chandos, under the name of 
Tiinon, in his poem on "Taste." The platerepresenteda viewof Burlington House, 
with Pope whitewasliing it, and bespattering the Duke of Chandos's coach. Pope 
made no retort, and has never mentioned Hogarth.] 

" Before I had done anything of much consequence in this walk, I entertained 
some hopes of succeeding in what the puffers in books call The Great Style of History 
Painting ; so that without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quit- 
ted small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own temerity, com- 
menced history-painter, and on a great staircase at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
painted two Scripture stories, the ' Pool of Beth; sda' and the ' Good Samaritan,' 
with figures seven feet high. * * * * But as religion, the great promoter of this 
style in other countries, rejected it in England, I was unwilling to sink into ?. portrait 
mamtfacturer ; and still ambitious of being singular, dropped all expectations of 
advantage from that source, and returned to the pursuit of my former dealings with 
the public at large. 

" As to portrait-painting, the chief branch of the art by which a painter can pro- 



502 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



carefully finished series of his comic paintings, and the por- 
trait of his own lionest face, of which the bright blue eyes shine 

cure himself a tolerable livelihood, and the only one by which a lover of money can 
get a fortune, a man of very moderate talents may have great success in it, as the 
artifice and address of a mercer is infinitely more useful than the abilities of a painter. 
By the manner in which the present race of professors in England conduct it, that also 
becomes still life." 

» * * « « 

"By this inundation of folly and puff '' {^hc has been speaking of the success of 
Vanloo^who catnc over here in 1737), ''I must confess I was much disgusted, and 
determined to try if by any means I could stem the torrent, and, by opposing, e7id it. 
I laughed at the pretensions of these quacks in coloring, ridiculed their productions 
as feeble and contemptible, and asserted that it required neither taste nor talents to 
excel their most popular performances. This interference excited much enmity, 
because, as my opponents told me, my studies were in another way. ' You talk,' 
added they, ' with ineffable contempt of portrait-painting ; if it is so easy a task, why 
do not you convince the world, by painting a portrait yourself ? ' Provoked at this 
language, I, one day at the Academy in St. Martin's Lane, put the following ques- 
tion : ' Supposing any man, at this time, were to paint a portrait as well as Vandyke, 
would it be seen or acknowledged, and could the artist enjoy the benefit or acquire 
the reputation due to his performance ? ' 

" They asked me in reply. If I could paint one as well ? and I frankly answered, 
I believed I could. * * * * 

" Of the mighty talents said to be requisite for portrait-painting I had not the 
most exalted opinion." 

Let us now hear him on the question of the Academy : — 

" To pester the three great estates of the empire, about twenty or thirty students 
drawing after a man or a horse, appears, as must be acknowledged, foolish enough : 
but the real motive is, that a few bustling characters, who have access to people of 
rank, think they can thus get a superiority over their brethren, be appointed to places, 
and have salaries, as in France, for telling a lad when a leg or an arm is too long or 
too short. "* * * * 

" France, ever aping the magnificence of other nations, has in its turn assumed a 
foppish kind of splendor sufficient to dazzle the eyes of the neighboring states, and 
draw vast sums of money from this country. * * * * 

" We return to our Royal Academy : I am told that one of their leading objects 
will be, sending young men abroad to study the antique statues, for such kind of 
studies may sometimes improve an exalted genius, but they will not create it ; and 
whatever has been the cause, this same travelling to Italy has, in several instances 
that I have seen, reduced the student from nature, and led him to paint marble fig- 
ures, in which he has availed himself of the great works of antiquity, as a coward 
does when he puts on the armor of an Alexander ; for, with similar pretensions and 
similar vanity, the painter supposes he shall be adored as a second Raphael Urbino." 

We must now hear him on his " Sigismunda: '' — 

" As the most violent and virulent abuse thrown on ' Sigismunda ' was from a set 
of miscreants, with whom I am proud of having been ever at war — I mean the ex- 
pounders of the mysteries of old pictures — I have been sometimes told they were 
beneath my notice. This is true of them individually ; but as they have access to 
people of rank, who seem as happy in being cheated as these merchants are in cheat- 
ing them, they have a power of doing much mischief to a modern artist. However 
mean the vendor of poisons, the mineral is destructive : — to me its operation was 
troublesome enough. All nature spreads so fast that now was the time for every little 
dog in the profession to bark ! '' 

Next comes a characteristic account of his controversy with Wilkes and Churchill. 

" The stagnation rendered it necessary that I should do some timid thing, to re- 
cover my lost time, and stop a gap in my income. This drew forth my print of 
' The Times,' a subject which tended to the restoration of peace and unanimity, and 
put the opposers of these humane objects in a light which gave great offence to those 
who were trying to foment disaffection in the minds of the populace. One of the 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 503 

out from the canvas and give j'ou an idea of that keen and 
brave look with which Wilham Hogarth regarded the world. 
No man was ever less of a hero : yju see him before you, and 
can fancy what he was — a jovial, honest London citizen, stout 
and sturdy ; a hearty, plain-spoken man,* loving his laugh, his 
friend, his glass, his roast-beef of Old England, and having a 
proper bourgeois scorn for French frogs, for mounseers, and 
wooden shoes in general, for foreign fiddlers, foreign singers, 
and, above all, for foreign painters, whom he held in the most 
amusing contempt. 

It must have been great fun to hear him rage against Cor- 
reggio and the Carracci ; to watch him thump the table and 
snap his fingers, and say, " Historical painters be hanged ; 
here's a man that will paint against any of them for a hundred 
pounds. Correggio's ' Sigismunda ! ' Look at Bill Hogarth's 
' Sigismunda ; ' look at my altar-piece at St. Mary Redcliffe, 

most notorious of them, till now my friend and flatterer, attacked me in the North 
Briton, in so infamous and malign a style, that he himself, when pushed even by his 
best friends, was driven to so poor an excuse as to say he was drunk when he wrote 
it. * * * 

" This renowned patriot's portrait, drawn like as I could as to features, and 
marked with some indications of his mind, fully answered my purpose. The ridicu- 
lous was apparent to every eye! A Brutus ! A saviour of his country with such an 
aspect — was so arrant a farce, that though it gave rise to much laughter in the look- 
ers-on, galled both him and his adherents to the bone. * * * 

" Churchill, Wilkes's toad-echo, put the North Briton into verse, in an Epistle to 
Hogarth ; but as the abuse was precisely the same, except a little poetical heighten- 
ing, which goes for nothing, it made no impression. * * * However, having an old 
plate by me, with some parts ready, such as the back-ground and a dog, I began to 
consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account, and so patched 
up a print of Master Churchill in the character of a Bear. The pleasure and pe- 
cuniary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, together with occa- 
sionally riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as can be expected at my 
time of life.'' 

* It happened in the early part of Hogarth's life, that a nobleman who was un- 
commonly ugly and deformed came to sit to him for his picture. It was executed 
with a skill that did honor to the artist's abilities ; but the likeness was rigidly ob- 
served, without even the necessary attention to compliment or flattery. The peer,. 
disgusted at this counterpart of himself, never once thought of paying for a reflection 
that would only disgust him with his deformities. Some time was suffered to elapse 
before the artist applied for his money ; but afterwards many applications were made 
by him (who had then no need of a banker) for payment, without success. The 
painter, however, at last hit upon an expedient. * * * It was couched in the fol- 
lowing card: — 

" ' Mr. Hogarth's dutiful respects to Lord . Finding that he does not mean 

to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of Mr. Hogarth's 
necessity for the money. If, therefore, his Lordship does not send for it, in three 
days it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail, and some other little append- 
ages, to Mr. Hare, the famous wild-beast man : Mr. Hogarth having given that gen- 
tleman a conditional promise of it, for an exhibition-picture, on his Lordship's 
refusal.' 

" This intimation had the desired effect." — Works, by Nichols and Steevens, 
vol. i. p. 25, 



S04 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



Bristol ; look at my ' Paul before Felix/ and see whether I'm 
not as good as the best of them.* 

Posterity has not quite confirmed honest Hogarth's opinion 
about his talents for the sublime. Although Swift could not 
see the difference between tvveedle-dee and tweedle-dum, pos- 
terity has not shared the Dean's contempt for Handel ; the 
world has discovered a difference between tweedle-dee and 
tweedle-dum, and given a hearty applause and admiration to 
Hogarth, too, but not exactly as a painter of scriptural subjects, 
or as a rival of Correggio. It does not take away from one's 
liking for the man, or from the moral of his story, or the humor 
of it — from one's admiration for the prodigious merit of his 
performances, to remember that he persisted to the last in be- 
lieving that the world was in a conspiracy against him with re- 
spect to his talents as an historical painter, and that a set of 
miscreants, as he called them, were employed to run his genius 
dovv-n. They say it was Liston's firm belief, that he was a great 
and neglected tragic actor ; they say that every one of us be- 
lieves in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he 
is something which he is not. One of the most notorious of 
of the " miscreants," Hogarth says, was Wilkes, who assailed 
him in the North Briton ; the other was Churchill, who put the 
North Briton attack in heroic verse, and published his " Epistle 
to Hogarth." Hogarth replied by that caricature of Wilkes, 
in which the patriot still figures before us, with his Satanic 
grin and squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which he 
is represented as a bear with a staff, on which, lie the first, lie 
the second — lie the tenth, are engraved in unmistakable letters. 
There is very little mistake about honest Hogarth's satire : if 
he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws him with 
his head almost off ; and he tried to do the same for his ene- 
mies in this little controversy. " Having an old plate by me," 

* " Garrick himself was not more ductile to flattery. A word in favor of 
* Sigismunda ' might have commanded a proof-print or forced an original print out of 
our artist's hands. * * * " 

" The following authenticated story of our artist (furnished by the late Mr. 
Eclchior, F. R. S., a surgeon of eminence) will also serve to show how much more 
easy it is to detect ill-placed or hyperbolical adulation respecting others, than when 
applied to ourselves. Hogarth, being at dinner with the great Cheselden and some 
other company, was told that Mr. John Freke, surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
a few evenings before at Dick's Coffee-House, had asserted that Greene was as 
eminent in composition as Handel. ' That fellow Frekc,' replied Hogarth, ' is 
always shooting his bolt absurdly, one way or another. Handel is a giant in music ; 
Greene only a light Florimel kind of a composer.' ' Ay,' says our artist's informant, 
'but at tlie same time Mr. Freke declared you were as good a portrait-painter as 

Vandyck.' — ' There he was right,' adds Hogarth, ' and so, by G , I am, give me 

my time and let me choose my subject.' " — Works, by Nichols and Steevens, 
vol. 1. pp. 236, 237. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 505 

says he, " with some parts ready, such as the background, and 
a dog-, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid 
aside to some account, and so patched up a print of Master 
Churchill, in the character of a bear ; the pleasure and pecu- 
niary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, 
together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored me 
to as much health as I can expect at my time of life." 

And so he concludes his queer little book of Anecdotes : 
" I have gone through the circumstances of a life which till 
lately passed pretty much to my own satisfaction, and I hope 
in no respect injurious to any other man. This I may safely 
assert, that I have done my best to make those about me toler- 
ably happy, and my greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an 
intentional injury. What may follow, God knows." 

A queer account still exists of a holiday jaunt taken by 
Hogarth and four friends of his, who set out, like the redoubted 
INIr. Pickwick and his companions, but just a hundred years 
before those heroes ; and made an excursion to Gravesend, Roch- 
ester, Sheerness, and adjacent places.* One of the gentlemen 
noted down the proceedings of the journey, for which Hogarth 
and a brother artist made drawings. The book is chiefly curi- 
ous at this moment from showing the citizen life of those days, 
and the rough jolly style of merriment, not of the five com- 
panions merely, but of thousands of jolly fellows of their time. 
Hogarth and his friends, quitting the " Bedford Arms," Co- 
vent Garden, with a song, took water to Billingsgate, exchang- 
ing compliments with the bargemen as they went down the 
river. At Billingsgate, Hogarth made " a caracatura " of a 
facetious porter, called the Duke of Puddledock, who agreeably 
entertained the party with the humors of the place. Hence 
they took a Gravesend boat for themselves ; and straw to lie 
upon, and a tilt over their heads, they sa}^, and went down the 
river at night, sleeping and singing jolly choruses. 

They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their 
faces and hands, and had their wigs powdered. Then they 
sallied forth for Rochester on foot, and drank by the way three 
pots of ale. At one o'clock they went to dinner with excel- 
lent port, and a quantity more beer, and afterwards Hogarth 
and Scott played at hopscotch in the tovvn hall. It would ap- 
pear that they slept most of them in one room, and the chroni- 
cler of the party describes them all as waking at seven o'clock, 
and telling each other their dreams. You have rough sketches 

* He made this excursion in 1732, his companions being John Thornhill (son of 
Sir James), Scott the landscape-painter, Tothall, and Forrest. 



co6 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

by Hogarth of the incidents of this hoUday excursion. The 
sturdy little painter is seen sprawling over a plank to a boat 
at Gravesend ; the whole company are represented in one de- 
sign, in a fisherman's room, where they had all passed the 
night. One gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself ; an- 
other is being shaved by the fisherman ; a third, with his hand- 
kerchief over his bald pate, is taking his breakfast ; and 
Hogarth is sketching the whole scene. 

They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, 
drank to their friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good 
flip, all singing merrily. 

It is a jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high jinks. 
These were the manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of his time 
very likely, of men not very refined, but honest and merry. It 
is a brave London citizen, with John Bull habits, prejudices, 
and pleasures.* 

Of Smollett's associates and manner of life the author of 
the admirable " Humphrey Clinker " has given us an interest- 
ing account, in that most amusing of novels. f 

* " Dr. Johnson made four lines once, on the death of poor Hogarth, which 
were equally true and pleasing ; I know not why Garrick's were preferred to 
them : — 

" ' The hand of him here torpid lies, 

That drew th' essential forms of grace ; 
Here, closed in death, th' attentive eyes. 
That saw the manners in the face.' 

" Mr. Hogarth, among the variety of kindnesses shown to me when I was too 
young to luive a proper sense of them, was used to be very earnest that 1 should obtain 
the acquaintance, and if possible the friendship, of Dr. Johnson ; whose conversation 
was, to the talk of other men, like Titian's painting compared to Hudson's, he said: 
' but don't you tell people now, that I say so,' continued he; 'for the connoisseurs 
and I are at war, you know ; and because I hate ihcvi, they think I hate Titian — and 
let them ! ' * * * Of Dr. Johnson, when my father and lie were talking about 
him one day, ' That man,' says Hogarth, ' is not contented with believing the Bible ; 
but he fairly resolves, I think, to believe nothing but the Bible. Johnson,' added 
he, ' though so wise a fellow, is more like King David than King Solomon, for he 
says in his baste, All men are liars.'' " — Mrs. Piozzi. 

Hogarth died on the 26th of October, 1764. The day before his death, he was 
removed from his villa at Chiswick to Leicester Fields, " in a very weak condition, yet 
remarkably cheerful." He had just received an agreeable letter from Franklin. He 
lies buried at Chiswick. 

t " To Sir Watkin Phillips, Bart., of Jesus College, Oxon. 

" Dear Phillips, — In my last, I mentioned my having spent an evening with 
a society of authors, who seemed to be jealous and afraid of one another. My uncle 
was not at all surprised to hear me say I was disappointed in their conversation. _ ' A 
man may be very entertaining and instructive upon paper,' said he, ' and e.xceedingly 
dull in common discourse. I have observed, that those who shine most in private 
company are but secondary stars in the constellation of genius. A small stock of 
ideas is more easily managed, and sooner displayed, than a great quantity crowded 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 507 

I have no doubt that this picture by Smollett is as faith- 
ful a one as any from the pencil of his kindred humorist, 
Hogarth. 

.together. There is very seldom anything extraordinary in the appearance and 
address of a good writer ; whereas a dull author generally distinguishes himself by 
some oddity or extravagance. For this reason 1 fancy that an assembly of grubs 
must be very diverting.' 

" My curiosity being excited by this hint, I consulted my friend Dick Ivy, who 
undertook to gratify it the very next day, which was Sunday last. He carried me 

to dine with S , whom you and I have long known by his writings. He lives in 

the skirts of the town ; and every Sunday his house is open to all unfortunate brothers 
of the quill, whom he treats with beef, pudding, and potatoes, port, punch, and 
Calvert's entire butt beer. He has fixed upon the first day of the week for the exer- 
cise of his hospitality, because some of his guests could not enjoy it on any other, for 
reasons that I need not explain. I was civilly received in a plain, yet decent habi- 
tation, which opened backwards into a very pleasant garden, kept in excellent order ; 
and, indeed, I saw none of the outward signs of authorship either in the house or the 
landlord, who is one of those few writers of the age that stand upon their own foun- 
dation, without patronage, and above dependence. If there was nothing characteristic 
in the entertainer, the company made ample amends for his want of singularity. 

" At two in the afternoon, I found myself one of ten messmates seated at table ; 
and I question if the whole kingdom could produce such another assemblage of 
originals. Among their peculiarities, I do not mention those of dress, which may be 
purely accidental. What struck me were oddities originally produced by affectation, 
and afterwards confirmed by habit. One of them wore spectacles at dinner, and 
another his hat flapped ; though (as Ivy told me) the first was noted for having a 
seaman's eye when a bailiff was in the wind ; and the other was never known to labor 
under any weakness or defect of vision, except about five years ago, when he was 
complimented with a couple of black eyes by a player, with whom he had quarrelled 
in his drink. A third wore a laced stocking, and made use of crutches, because, once 
in his life, he had been laid up with a broken leg, though no man could leap over a 
stick with more agility. A fourth had contracted such an antipathy to the country, 
that he insisted upon sitting with his back towards the window that looked into the 
garden ; and when a dish of cauliflower was set upon the table, he snuffed up 
volatile salts to keep him from fainting ; yet this delicate person was the son of a 
cottager, born under a hedge, and had many years run wild among asses on a com- 
mon. A fifth affected distraction : when spoke to he always answered from the 
purpose. Sometimes he suddenly started up, and rapped out a dreadful oath ; some- 
times he burst out a laughing ; then he folded his arms, and sighed ; and then he 
hissed like fifty serpents. 

" At first, I really thought he was mad ; and, as he sat near me, began to be 
under some apprehensions for my own safety ; when our landlord, perceiving me 
alarmed, assured me aloud that I had nothing to fear. ' The gentleman,' said he, ' is 
trying to act a part for which he is by no means qualified : if he had all the incli- 
nation in the world, it is not in his power to be mad ; his spirits are too flat to be 
kindled into phrenzy.' ''Tis not bad p-p-puff, how-owever,'' observed a person 
in a tarnished laced coat : ' aff-ff ected m-madness v/-ill p-pass for w-wit w-with 
nine-nineteen out of t-twenty.' ' And affected stuttering for humor,' replied our land- 
lord ; ' though, God knows ! there is no affinity between them.' It seems this wag, 
after having made some abortive attempts in plain speaking, had recourse to this 
defect, by means of which he frequently extorted the laugh of the company, without 
the least expense of genius ; and that imperfection, which he had at first counter- 
feited, was now become so habitual, that he could not lay it aside. 

" A certain winking genius, who wore yellow gloves at dinner, had, on his first 

introduction, taken such offence at S , because he looked and talked, and ate and 

drank, like any other man, that he spoke contemptuously of his understanding ever 
after, and never would repeat his visit, until he had exhibited the following proof of 
his caprice. Wat Wyvil, the poet, having made some unsuccessful advances towards 
an intimacy with S , at last gave him to understand, by a third person, that he 



goS ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

We have before us, and painted by his own hand, Tobias 
Smollett, the manly, kindly, honest, and irascible ; worn and 
battered, but still brave and full of heart, after a long struggle 

had written a poem in his praise, and a satire against his person : that if he would 
admit him to his house, the first sliould be immediately sent to press ; but that if he 

persisted in declining his friendship, he would publish the satire without delay. S 

replied, that he looked upon Wyvil's penegyric as, in effect, a specimen of infamy, 
and would resent it accordingly with a good cudgel ; but if he published the satire he 
might deserve his compassion, and had nothing to fear from his revenge. Wyvil 

having considered the alternative, resolved to mortify S by printing the 

panegyric, for which he received a sound drubbing. Then he swore the peace against 
the aggressor, who, in order to avoid a prosecution at law, admitted him to his good 

graces. It was the singularity in S 's conduct on this occasion, that reconciled 

him to the yellow-gloved philosopher, who owned he had some genius ; and from 
that period cultivated his acquaintance. 

" Curious to know upon what subjects the several talents of my fellow-guests 
were employed, I applied to my communicative friend Dick Ivy, who gave me to 
understand that most of them were, or liad been, understrappers, or journeymen, to 
more creditable authors, for whom they translated, collated, and compiled, in the 
business of bookmaking ; and tliat all of them had, at different times, labored in the 
service of our landlord, though they had now set up for themselves in various depart- 
ments of literature. Not only their talents, but also their nations and dialects, were 
so various, that our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at Babel. We 
had the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, and foreign idiom, twanged off by the most 
discordant vociferation ; for as they all spoke together, no man had any chance to be 
heard, unless he could bawl louder than liis fellows. It must be owned, however, 
there was nothing pedantic in their discourse ; they carefully avoided all learned 
disquisitions, and endeavored to be facetious : nor did their endeavors always mis- 
carry ; some droll repartee passed, and much laugliter was excited ; and if any 
individual lost his temper so far as to transgress the bounds of decorum, he was 
effectually checked by the master of the feast, who exerted a sort of paternal 
authority over this irritable tribe. 

" The most learned philosopher of the whole collection, who had been expelled 
the university for atheism, has made great progress in a refutation of Lord Boling- 
broke's metaphysical works, which is said to V'--. equally ingenious and orthodox : but, 
in the meantime, he has been presented to the grand jury as a public nuisance for 
having blasphemed in an alehouse on the Lord's-day. The Scotchman gives lectures 
on the pronunciation of the English language, which he is now publishing by sub- 
scription. 

" The Irishman is a political writer, and goes by the name of My Lord Potatoe. 
He wrote a pamphlet in vindication of a Minister, hoping his zeal would be rewarded 
with some place or pension ; but finding himself neglected in that quarter, he whis- 
pered about tliat the pamphlet was written by the Minister himself, and he published 
an answer to his own production. In this he addressed the author under the title of 
' your lordship,' with such solemnity, that the public swallowed the deceit, and 
bought up the whole impression. The wise politicians of the metropolis declared 
they were both masterly performances, and chuckled over the flimsy reveries of an 
ignorant garretteer, as the profound speculations of a veteran statesman, acquainted 
with all the secrets of the cabinet. The imposture was detected in the sequel, and 
our Hibernian pamphleteer retains no part of his assumed importance but the 
bnre title of 'my lord,' and the upper part of the table at the potatoe-ordinary in Shoe 
Lane. 

" Opposite to me sat a Piedmontese, who had obliged the public with a humorous 
satire, entitled ' The Balance of the English Poets ; ' a performance which evinced 
the great modesty and taste of the author, and, in particular, his intimacy with the 
elegancies of the English language. The sage, wlio labored under the dypoi|)o/3ia, or, 
' horror of green fields,' had just finished a treatise on practical agriculture, though, 
in fact, he had never seen corn growing in his life, and was so ignorant of grain, that 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 509 

against a hard fortune. His brain had been busied with a 
hundred different schemes ; he had been reviewer and historian, 
critic, medical writer, poet, pamphleteer. He had fought end- 
less literary battles ; and braved and wielded for years the 
cudgels of controversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those 
days, and a niggard pay. He was oppressed by illness, age, 
narrow fortune ; but his spirit was still resolute, and his cour- 
age steady ; the battle over, he could do justice to the enemy 
with whom he had been so fiercely engaged, and give a not un- 
friendly grasp to the hand that had mauled him. He is like 
one of those Scotch cadets, of whom history gives us so many 
examples, and whom, with a national fidelity, the great Scotch 
novelist has painted so charmingly. Of gentle birth * and nar- 

our entertainer, in the face of the whole company, made him own that a plate of 
hominy was the best rice-pudding he had ever eat. 

" The stutterer had almost finished his travels through Europe and part of Asia, 
without ever budging beyond the liberties of the King's Bench, except in term-time 
with a tipstaff for his companion : and as for little Tim Cropdale, the most facetious 
member of the whole society, he had happily wound up the catastrophe of a virgin 
tragedy, from the exhibition of which he promised himself a large fund of profit and 
reputation. Tim had made shift to live many years by writing novels, at the rate of 
five pounds a volume; but that branch of business is now engrossed by female 
authors, who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease, and 
spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and all in the serene tran- 
quillity of high life, tliat the reader is not only enchanted by their genius, but 
reformed by their morality. 

" After dinner, we adjourned into the garden, where I observed Mr. S give a 

short separate audience to every individual in a small remote filbert-walk, from 
whence most of them dropped off one after another, without further ceremony.'' 

Smollett's house was in Lawrence Lane, Chelsea, and is now destroyed. See 
Handbook of London, p. 115. 

" The person of Smollett was eminently handsome, his features prepossessing, 
and, by the joint testimony of all his surviving friends, his conversation, in the 
highest degree, instructive and amusing. Of his disposition, those who have read his 
works (and who has not ?) may form a very accurate estimate ; for in each of them 
he has presented, and sometimes, under various points of view, the leading features 
of his own character without disguising the most unfavorable of tliem. * * # * 
When unseduced by his satirical propensities, he was kind, generous, and humane to 
others ; bold, upright, and independent in his own character ; stooped to no patron, 
sued for no favor, but honestly and honorably maintamed himself on his literary 
labors. *- * * * He was a doating father, and an affectionate husband ; and 
the warm zeal with which his memory was cherished by his surviving friends showed 
clearly the reliance which they placed upon his regard." — Sir Walter Scott. 

* Smollett of Bonhill, in Dumbartonshire. Arms, azure, a bend, or, between a 
lion rampant, ppr., holding in his paw a banner, argent, and a bugle-horn, also ppr. 
Crest, an oak-tree, ppr.. Motto Vircsco. 

Smollett's father, Archibald, was the fourth son of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, 
a Scotch Judge and Member of Parliament, and one of the commissioners for framing 
the Union with England. Archibald married, without the old gentleman's consent, 
and died early, leaving his children dependent on their grandfather. Tobias, the 
second son, was born in 1721, in the old house of Dalquharn in the valley of Leven ; 
and all his life loved and admired that valley and Loch Lomond beyond all the vallej's 
and lakes in Europe, He learned the " rudiments '' at Dumbarton Grammar School, 
and studied at Glasgow, 

But when he was only ten, his grandfather died, and left him without provision 



5IO 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



row means, going out from his northern home to win his for- 
tune in the world, and to fight his way, armed with courage, 
hunger, and keen wits. His crest is a shattered oak-tree, with 
green leaves yet springing from it. On his ancient coat-of-arms 
there is a lion and a horn ; this shield of his was battered and 
dinted in a hundred fights and brawls,* through which the 

(figuring as the old judge in " Roderick Random '' in consequence, according to Sir 
Walter). Tobias, armed with the " Regicide, a Tragedy," — a provision precisely 
similar to that with which Dr. Johnson had started, just before — came up to London. 
The "Regicide" came to no good, though at first patronized by Lord Lyttelton 
("one of those little fellows who are sometimes called great men," Smollett says); 
and Smollett embarked as " surgeon's mate " on board a line-of-battle ship, and 
served in the Carthagena expedition, in 1741. He left the service in the West 
Indies, and after residing some time in Jamaica, returned to England in 1746. 

He was now unsuccessful as a physician, to begin with ; published the satires, 
" Advice " and " Reproof," without any luck ; and (1747) married the " beautiful and 
accomplished Miss Lascelles." 

In 174S he brought out his " Roderick Random," which at once made a "hit.'' 
The subsequent events of his life may be presented, chronologically, in a bird's-eye 
view : — 

1750. Made a tour to Paris, where he chiefly wrote " Peregrine Pickle." 

1751. Published " Peregrine Pickle." 

1753. Published "Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom." 

1755. Published version of " Don Quixote." 

1756. Began the " Critical Review." 
1758. Published his " History of England.'' 

1763-1766. Travelling in France and Italy; published his "Travels." 

1769. Published " Adventures of an Atom." 

1770. Set out for Italy ; diedat Leghorn 21st of October, 1771, in the fifty-first year 
of his age. 

* A good specimen of the old "slashing" style of writing is presented by the 
paragraph on Admiral Knowles, which subjected Smollett to prosecution and im- 
prisonment. The admiral's defence on the occasion of the failure of the Rochfort 
expedition came to be examined before the tribunal of the " Critical Review.'' 

"He is,'' said our author, "an admiral without conduct, an engineer without 
knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity ! " 

Three months' imprisonment in the King's Bench avenged this stinging paragraph. 

But the "Critical" was to Smollett a perpetual fountain of "hot water." 
Among less important controversies may be mentioned that with Grainger, the 
translator of " Tibullus." Grainger replied in a pamphlet ; and in the next number 
of the " Review " we find him threatened with " castigation," as an "owl that has 
broken from his mew ! '' 

In Dr. Moore's biography of him is a pleasant anecdote. After publishing the 
" Don Quixote," he returned to Scotland to pay a visit to his mother : — 

" On Smollett's arrival he was mtroduced to his mother with the connivance of 
Mrs. Telfer (her daughter), as a gentleman from the West Indies, who was inti- 
mately acquainted with her son. The better to support his assumed character, he 
endeavored to preserve a serious countenance, apptoachir.g to a frown ; but while 
his mother's eyes were riveted on his countenance, he could not refrain from smiling : 
she immediately sprung from her chair, and throwing her arms round his neck, 
exclaimed, ' Ah, my son ! my son ! I have found you at last ! ' 

" She afterwards told him, that if he had kept his austere looks and continued to 
gloom, he might have escaped detection some time longer, but ' your old roguish 
smile,' added she, ' betrayed you at once.' '' 

" Sliortly after the publication of ' The Adventures of an Atom,' disease again 
attacked Smollett with redoubled violence. Attempts being vainly made to obtain for 
him the office of Consul in some part of the Mediterranean, he was compelled to seek 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 51 x 

stout Scotchman bore it courageously. You see somehow that 
he is a gentleman, through all his battling and struggling, his 
poverty, his hard-fought successes, and his defeats. His novels 
are recollections of his own adventures ; his characters drawn, as 
I should think, from personages with whom he became acquaint- 
ed in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have 
had ; queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow College — 
in the country apothecary's shop ; in the gun-room of the man- 
of-war where he served as surgeon ; and in the hard life on 
shore, where the sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He 
did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest percep- 
tive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish 
and delightful broad humor. I think Uncle Bowling, in " Rod- 
erick Random," is as good a character as Squire Western 
himself : and Mr. Morgan, the Welsh apothecary, is as pleas- 
ant as Dr. Caius. What man who has made his inestimable 
acquaintance — what novel-reader who loves Don Quixote and 
Major Dalgetty — will refuse his most cordial acknowledgments 
to the admirable Lieutenant Lismahago, The novel of " Hum- 
phrey Clinker " is, I do think, the most laughable story that 
has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing be- 
gan. Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble must keep Eng- 
lishmen on the grin for ages yet to come ; and in their letters 
and the story of their loves there is a perpetual fount of spark- 
ling laughter, as inexhaustible as Bladud's well. 

Fielding, too, has described, though with a greater hand, 
the characters and scenes which he knew and saw. He had 
more than ordinary opportunities for becoming acquainted with 
life. His family and education, first — his fortunes and mis- 
fortunes afterwards, brought him into the society of every rank 
and condition of man. He is himself the hero of his books : 
he is wild Tom Jones, he is wild Captain Booth ; less wild, I 
am glad to think, than his predecessor : at least heartily con- 
scious of demerit, and anxious to amend. 

When Fielding first came upon the town in 1727, the recol- 
lection of the great wits was still fresh in the coffee-houses and 

a warmer climate, without better means of provision than his own precarious finances 
could afford. The kindness of his distmguished friend and countryman, Dr. Arm- 
strong (then abroad), procured for Dr. and Mrs. Smollett a house at Monte Nero, a 
village situated on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea, in the neighborhood 
of Leghorn, a romantic and salutary abode, where he prepared for the press, the last, 
and like music ' sweetest in the close,' the most pleasing of his compositions, ' The 
Expedition of Humphrey CJinker.' This delightful work was published in 1771.''— 
Sir Walter Scott. 



5^2 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



assemblies, and the judges there declared that young Harry 
Fielding had more spirits and wit than Congreve or any of his 
brilliant successors. His figure was tall and stalwart ; his face 
handsome, manly, and noble-looking ; to the very last days of 
his life he retained a grandeur of air, and although worn down 
by disease, his aspect and presence imposed respect upon the 
people round about him. 

A dispute took place between Mr. Fielding and the cap- 
tain * of the ship in which he was making his last voyage, and 
Fielding relates how the man finally went down on his knees 
and begged his passenger's pardon. He was living up to the 
last days of his life, and his spirit never gave in. His vital 
power must have been immensely strong. Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu f prettily characterizes Fielding and this capacity for 
happiness which he possessed, in a little notice of his death, 
when she compares him to Steele, who was as improvident and 
as happy as he was, and says that both should have gone on 
living for ever. One can fancy the eagerness and gusto with 
which a man of Fielding's frame, with his vast health and ro- 
bust appetite, his ardent spirits, his joyful humor, and his keen 
and hearty relish for life, must have seized and drunk that cup 
of pleasure which the town offered to him. Can any of my 
hearers remember the youthful feats of a college breakfast — 

* The dispute with the captain arose from the wish of that functionary to intrude 
on his right to his cabin, for which he had paid thirty pounds. After recounting the 
circumstances of the apology, he characteristically adds : — 

" And here, that I may not be thought the sly trumpeter of my own praises, I do 
utterly disclaim all praise on the occasion. Neither did the greatness of my mind 
dictate, nor the force of my Christianity exact this forgiveness. To speak truth, I 
forgave him from a motive which would make men much more forgiving, if they were 
much wiser than they are, because it was convenient for me so to do." 

t Lady Mary was his second-cousin — their respective grandfathers being sons of 
George Fielding, Earl of Desmond, son of William, Earl of Denbigh. 

In a letter dated just a week before his death, she says — 

" H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his first wife in the characters 
of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure excepted ; and I am 
persuaded, several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact. 1 wonder 
he does not perceive Tom Jones and Mr. Booth are sorry scoundrels. * * * * 
Fielding has really a fund of true humor, and was to be pitied at his first entrance 
into the world, having no choice, as he said himself, but to be a hackney writer or a 
hackney coachman. His genius deserved a better fate ; but I cannot help blaming 
that continued indiscretion, to give it the softest name, that has run through his life, 
and I am afraid still remains. * * * * Since I was born no original has appeared 
excepting Congreve, and Fielding, who would, I believe, have approached nearer to 
his excellences, if not forced by his necessities to publish without correction, and 
throw many productions into the world he would have thrown into the fire, if meat 
could have been got without money, or money without scribbling. * » * * I 
am sorry not to see any more of Peregrine Pickle's performances ; I wish you would 
tell me his name."— Z^/Z^w and Works (Lord Wharncliffe's Ed.), vol. iii. pp. 
93. 94- 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 513 

the meats devoured and the cups quaffed in that Homeric feast ? 
I can call to mind some of the heroes of those youthful ban- 
quets, and fancy young Fielding from Leyden rushing upon the 
feast, with his great laugh and immense healthy young appe- 
tite, eager and vigorous to enjoy. The young man's wit and 
manners made him friends everywhere : he lived with the grand 
Man's society of those days ; he was courted by peers and 
men of wealth and fashion. As he had a paternal allowance 
from his father. General Fielding, which, to use Henry's own 
phrase, any man might pay who would ; as he liked good wine, 
good clothes, and good company, which are all expensive arti- 
cles to purchase, Harry Fielding began to run into debt, and 
borrow money in that easy manner in which Captain Booth 
borrows money in the novel : was in nowise particular in ac- 
cepting a few pieces from the purses of his rich friends, and 
bore down upon more than one of them, as Walpole tells us only 
too truly, for a dinner or a guinea. To supply himself with the 
latter he began to write theatrical pieces, having already, no 
doubt, a considerable acquaintance amongst the Oldfields and 
Bracegirdles behind the scenes. He laughed at these pieces 
and scorned them. When the audience upon one occasion be- 
gan to hiss a scene which he was too lazy to correct, and regard- 
ing which, when Garrick remonstrated with him, he said that 
the public was too stupid to find out the badness of his work : 
when the audience began to hiss. Fielding said, with charac- 
teristic coolness — " They have found it out, have they ? " He 
did not prepare his novels in this way, and with a very different 
care and interest laid the foundations and built up the edifices 
of his future fame. 

Time and shower have very little damaged those. The 
fashio^n and ornaments are, perhaps, of the architecture of 
that age ; but the buildings remain strong and lofty, and of 
admirable proportions — masterpieces of genius and monuments 
of workmanlike skill. 

I cannot offer or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. 
Why hide his faults ? Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud 
of periphrases ? Why not show him, like him as he is, not 
robed in a marble toga, and draped and polished in an heroic 
attitude, but with inked ruffles, and claret-stains on his tar- 
nished laced coat, and on his manly face the marks of good- 
fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care, and wine. Stained ■ 
as you see him, and worn by care and dissipation, that man 
retains some of the most precious and splendid human quali- 
ties and endowments. He has an admirable natural love of 



5^4 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the hap- 
piest satirical giEt of Laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonder- 
fully wise and detective ; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens 
up a rascal like a policeman's lantern. He is one of the man- 
liest and kindliest of human beings : in the midst of all his 
imperfections, he respects female innocence and infantine ten- 
derness, as you would suppose such a great-hearted, coura- 
geous soul would respect and care for them. He could not be 
so brave, generous, truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely 
merciful, pitiful, and tender. He will give any man his purse 
— he can't help kindness and profusion. He may have low 
tastes, but not a mean mind ; he admires with all his heart 
good and virtuous men, stoops to no flatter}'-, bears no rancor, 
disdains all disloyal arts, does his public duty uprightly, is 
fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work.* 

If that theory be — and I have no doubt it is — the right and 
safe one, that human nature is always pleased with the spec- 
tacle of innocence rescued by fidelity, purity, and courage ; I 
suppose that of the heroes of Fielding's three novels, we should 
like honest Joseph Andrews the best, and Captain Booth the 
second, and Tom Jones the third. f 

Joseph Andrews, though he wears Lady Booby's cast-off 
livery, is, I think, to the full as polite as Tom Jones in his 
fustian-suit, or Captain Booth in regimentals. He has, like 
those heroes, large calves, broad shoulders, high courage, and 
a handsome face. The accounts of Joseph's bravery and good 
qualities ; his voice, too musical to halloo to the dogs ; his 
bravery in riding races for the gentlemen of the country, and 
his constancy in refusing bribes and temptation, have some- 
thing affecting in their ndiveti and freshness, and prepossess 
one in favor of that young hero. The rustic bloom of Fanny, 
and the delightful simplicity of Parson Adams, are described 
with a friendliness which wins the reader of their story ; we 
part from them with more regret than from Booth and Jones. 

Fielding, no doubt, began to write this novel in ridicule of 
" Pamela," for which work one can understand the hearty con- 

* He sailed for Lisbon, from Gravesend, on Sunday morning, June 3otb, 1754 ; 
and began " The Journal of a Voyage '' during the passage. He died at Lisbon, 
in the beginnins; of October of the same year. He lies buried there, in the 
English Protestant churchyard, near the Estrella Church, with this mscription over 
him : — 

" HENRICUS FIELDING. 

LUGEt BRITANNIA GREMIO NON DATUM 

FOVERE NATUM." 

t Fielding himself is said by Dr. Warton to have preferred " Joseph Andrews " 
to his other writings. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 



515 



tempt and antipathy which such an athletic and boisterous 
genius as Fielding's must have entertained. He couldn't do 
otherwise than laugh at the puny cockney bookseller, pouring 
out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up 
to scorn as a mollycoddle and a milksop. His genius had been 
nursed on sack-posset, and not on dishes of tea. His muse 
had sung the loudest in tavern choruses, had seen the daylight 
streaming in over thousands of emptied bowls and reeled home 
to chambers on the shoulders of the watchman, Richardson's 
goddess was attended by old maids and dowagers, and fed on 
muffins and bohea. " Milksop ! " roars Harry Fielding, clat- 
tering at the timid shop-shutters. " Wretch ! Monster ! 
Mohock ! " shrieks the sentimental author of " Pamela ; '" * 
and all the ladies of his court cackle out an affrighted chorus. 
Fielding proposes to write a book in ridicule of the author, 
whom he dislikes and utterly scorned and laughed at ; but he 
is himself of so generous, jovial, and kindly a turn that he be- 
gins to like the characters which he invents, can't help making 
them manly and pleasant as well as ridiculous, and before he 
has done with them all, loves them heartily every one. 

Richardson's sickening antipathy for Harry Fielding is 
quite as natural as the other's laughter and contempt at the 
sentimentalist, I have not learned that these likings and dis- 
likings have ceased in the present day : and every author must 
lay his account not only to misrepresentation, but to honest 
enmity among critics, and to being hated and abused for good 
as well as for bad reasons. E.ichardson disliked Fielding's 
works quite honestly : Walpole quite honestly spoke of them 
as vulgar and stupid. Their squeamish stomachs sickened at 
the rough fare and the rough guests assembled at Fielding's 
jolly revel. Indeed the cloth might have been cleaner : and 
the dinner and the company were scarce such as suited a 
dandy. The kind and wise old Johnson would not sit down 
with him.f But a greater scholar than Johnson could afford 

* " Richardson," says wortliy Mrs. Barbauld, in her Memoir of him, prefixed to 
his Correspondence, " was exceedingly hurt at this (' Joseph Andrews '), the more so 
as they had been on good terms, and he was very intimate with Fielding's two 
sisters. He never appears cordially to have forgiven it (perhaps it was not in human 
nature he should), and he always speaks in his letters with a great deal of asperity 
of ' Tom Jones,' more indeed than was quite graceful in a rival author. No doubt 
he himself thought his indignation was sorely excited by the loose morality of the 
work and of its author, but he could tolerate Gibber." 

t It must always be borne in mind, that besides that the Doctor couldn't be 
expected to like Fielding's wild life (to say nothing of the fact that they were of 
opposite sides in politics), Richardson was one of his earliest and kindest 
friends. Yet Johnson too (as Boswell tells us) read "Amelia"' through without 
stopping. 



5 1 6 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

to admire that astonishing genius of Harry Fielding : and we 
all know the lofty panegyric which Gibbon wrote of him, and 
which remains a towering monument to the great novelist's 
memory. "Our immortal Fielding," Gibbon writes, "was of 
the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their 
origin from the Counts of Hapsburgh. The successors of 
Charles V. may disdain their brethren of England : but the 
romance of ' Tom Jones,' that exquisite picture of humor and 
manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Im- 
perial Eagle of Austria." 

There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. 
To have your name mentioned by Gibbon, is like having it 
written on the dome of St. Peter's. Pilgrims from all the 
world admire and behold it. 

As a picture of manners, the novel of " Tom Jones " is indeed 
exquisite : as a work of construction quite a wonder : the by- 
play of wisdom ; the power of observation ; the multiplied 
felicitous turns and thoughts ; the varied character of the great 
Comic Epic : keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curi- 
osity.* But against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we have a right 
to put in a protest, and quarrel with the esteem the author 
evidently has for that character. Charles Lamb says finely of 
Jones, that a single hearty laugh from him "clears the air" — 
but then it is in a certain state of the atmosphere. It might 
clear the air when such personages as Blifil or Lady Bellaston 
poison it. But I fear very much that (except until the very 
last scene of the story), when Mr. Jones enters Sophia's draw- 
ing-room, the pure air there is rather tainted with the young 
gentleman's tobacco-pipe and punch. I can't say that I think 
Mr. Jones a virtuous character; I can't say but that I think 
Fielding's evident liking and admiration for Mr. Jones shows 
that the great humorist's moral sense was blunted by his life, 

* " Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners morals 
appear to change — actually change with some, but appear to change with all but the 
abandoned. A young man of the present day who should act as Tom Jones is sup- 
posed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston, &c., would not be a Tom Jones ; and a 
Tom Jones of the present day, without perhaps being in the ground a better man, 
would have perished rather than submit to be kept by a harridan of fortune. There- 
fore, this novel is, and indeed pretends to be, no example of conduct. But, notwith- 
standing all this, I do loathe the cant that can recommend ' Pamela ' and ' Clarissa 
Harlowe' as strictly moral, although they poison the imagination of the young with 
continued doses of iinct. lytta, while Tom Jones is prohibited as loose. I do not 
speak of young women ; but a young man whose heart or feelings can be injured, or 
even his passions excited by this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a 
cheerful, sunshiny, breezy spirit, that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with 
the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson.'' — Coleridge : Literary Re- 
mains, vol. ii. p. 374. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 517 

and that here, in Art and Ethics, there is a great error. If it is 
right to have a hero whom we may admire, let us at least take 
care that he is admirable : if, as is the plan of some authors (a 
plan decidedly against their interests, be it said), it is pro- 
pounded that there exists in life no such being, and therefore 
that in novels, the picture of life, there should appear no such 
character ; then Mr. Thomas Jones becomes an admissible 
person, and we examine his defects and good qualities, as we 
do those of Parson Thwackum, or Miss Seagrim. But a hero 
with a flawed reputation ; a hero spunging for a guinea ; a hero 
who can't pay his landlady, and is obliged to let his honor 
out to hire, is absurd, and his claim to heroic rank untenable. 
I protest against Mr. Thomas Jones holding such rank at all. I 
protest even against his being considered a more than ordinary 
young fellow, ruddy-cheeked, broad-shouldered, and fond of 
wine and pleasure. He would not rob a cliurch, but that is all ; 
and a pretty long argument may be debated, as to which 
of these old types, the spendthrift, the hypocrite, Jones and 
Blifil, Charles and Joseph Surface, — is the worst member of 
society and the most deserving of censure. The prodigal 
Captain Booth is a better man than his predecessor Mr. Jones, 
in so far as he thinks much more humbly of himself than Jones 
did : goes down on his knees, and owns his weaknesses, and 
cries out, " Not for my sake, but for the sake of my pure and 
sweet and beautiful wife Amelia, I pray you, O critical reader, 
to forgive me." That stern moralist regards him from the 
bench (the judge's practice out of court is not here the ques- 
tion), and says, " Captain Booth, it is perfectly true that your 
life has been disreputable, and that on many occasions you 
have shown yourself to be no better than a scamp — you have 
been tippling at the tavern, when the kindest and sweetest lady 
in the world has cooked your little supper of boiled mutton and 
awaited you all the night ; you have spoilt the little dish of 
boiled mutton thereby, and caused pangs and pains to Amelia's 
tender heart.* You have got iuto debt without the means of 

* " Nor was she (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) a stranger to that beloved first 
wife, whose picture he drew in his ' Amelia,' when, a& she said, even the glowing 
language he knew how to employ, did not do more than justice to the amiable qualities 
of the original, or to her beauty, although this had suffered a little from the accident 
related in the novel — a frightful overturn, which destroyed the gristle of her nose. 
He loved her passionately, and she returned his affection * * * 

" His biographers seem to have been shy of disclosing that, after the death of this 
charming woman, he married her maid. And yet the act was not so discreditable to 
his character as it may sound. The maid had few personal charms, but was an 
excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and almost broken-hearted for 
her loss. In the first agonies of his own grief, which approached to frenzy, he found 



5 1 8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

paying it. You have gambled the money with which you ought 
to have paid your rent. You have spent in drink or in worse 
amusements the sums which your poor wife has raised upon 
her Httle home treasures, her own ornaments, and the toys of 
her children. But, you rascal ! you own humbly that you are 
no better than you should be ; you never for one moment pre- 
tend that you are anything but a miserable weak-minded rogue. 
You do in your heart adore that angelic woman, your wife, 
and for her sake, sirrah, you shall have your discharge. 
Lucky for you and for others like you, that in spite of your 
failings and imperfections, pure hearts pity and love you. For 
your*wife's sake you are permitted to go hence without a re- 
mand ; and I beg you, by the way, to carry to that angelical 
lady the expression of the cordial respect and admiration of 
this court." Amelia pleads for her husband. Will Booth : 
Amelia pleads for her reckless kindly old father, Harry Field- 
ing. To have invented that character, is not only a triumph of 
art, but it is a good action. They say it was in his own home 
that Fielding knew her and loved her ; and from his own wife 
that he drew the most charming character in English fiction. 
Fiction ! why fiction ? why not history ? I know Amelia just as 
well as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I believe in Colonel Bath 
almost as much as in Colonel Gardiner or the Duke of Cumber- 
land. I admire the author of "Amelia," and thank the kind 
master who introduced me to that sweet and delightful com- 
panion and friend. " Amelia " perhaps is not a better story 
than " Tom Jones," but it has the better ethics ; the prodigal 
repents at least, before forgiveness, — whereas that odious broad- 
backed Mr. Jones carries off his beauty with scarce an interval 
of remorse for his manifold errors and short-comings ; and is 
not half punished enough before the great prize of fortune and 
love falls to his share. I am angry with Jones. Too much of 
the plum-cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swag- 
gering young scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without 

no relief but from weeping along with her ; nor solace when a degree calmer, but in 
talking to her of the angel they mutually regretted. This made her his habitual confi- 
dential associate, and in process of time he began to think he could not give his 
children a tenderer mother, or secure for himself a more faithful housekeeper and 
nurse. At least, this was what he told his friends ; and it is certain that her conduct 
as his wife confirmed it, and fully justified his good opinion.'' — Letters and Works 
of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Edited by Lord Wharncuffe. Introduc- 
tory Anecdotes., vol. i. pp. 80, Ri. 

Fielding's first wife was Miss Craddock, a young lady from Salisbury, with a 
fortune of 1,500/., whom he married in 1736. About the same time he succeeded, 
himself, to an estate of 200/. per annum, and on the joint amount he lived for some 
time as a splendid country gentleman in Dorsetshire. Three years brought him to 
the end of his fortune j wheii he returned to London and became a student of law. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 519 

a proper sense of decorum ; the fond, foolish, palpitatng little 
creature ! — " Indeed, Mr. Jones," she says, — " it rests with you 
to appoint the day." I suppose Sophia is drawn from life as 
well as Amelia ; and many a young fellow, no better than Mr. 
Thomas Jones, has carried by a coupde fnain the heart of many 
a kind girl who is a great deal too good for him. 

What a wonderful art ! What an admirable gift of nature 
was it by which the author of these tales was endowed, and 
which enabled him to fix our interest, to waken our sympathy, 
to seize upon our credulity, so that we believe in his people 
— speculate gravely upon their faults or their excellences, 
prefer this one or that, deplore Jones's fondness for drink 
and play. Booth's fondness for play and drink, and the un- 
fortunate position of the wives of both gentlemen — love 
and admire those ladies with all our hearts, and talk about 
them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted with them this 
morning in their actual drawing-rooms or should meet them 
this afternoon in the Park ! What a genius ! what a vigor ! 
what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation ! what a whole- 
some hatred for meanness and knavery ! what a vast sympathy ! 
what a cheerfulness ! what a manly relish of life ! what a love of 
human kind ! what a poet is here ! — watching, meditating, brood- 
ing, creating ! What multitudes of truths has that man left be- 
hind him ! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and 
fairly ! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the 
exercise of thoughtful humor and the manly play of wit ! What 
a courage he had ! What a dauntless and constant cheerful- 
ness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the 
storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck ! It is 
wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the man 
suffered ; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he en- 
dured ; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melan- 
choly, his view of truth never warped, and his generous hu- 
man kindness never surrendered.* 

* In the Gentleman'' s Magazine for 17S6, an anecdote is related of Harry 
Fielding, "in whom," says the correspondent, "good-nature and philanthropy in 
their extreme degree were known to be the prominent features." It seems that 
'' some parochial taxes " for his house in Beaufort Buildings had long been demanded 
by the collector. " At last, Harry went off to Johnson, and obtained by a process of 
literary mortgage the needful sum. He was returning with it, when he met an old 
college chum whom he had not seen for many years. He asked the chum to dinner 
with him at a neighboring tavern ; and learning that he was in difficulties, emptied 
the contents of his pocket into his. On returning home he was informed that the 
collector had been twice for the money. ' Friendship has called for the money and 
had it,' said Fielding ; 'let the collector call again.' " 

It is elsewhere told of him, that being in company with the Earl of Denbigh, his 



520 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



In the quarrel mentioned before, which happened on Field- 
ing's last voyage to Lisbon, and when the stout captain of the 
ship fell down on his knees and asked the sick man's pardon — 
" I did not suffer," Fielding says, in his hearty, manly way, his 

kinsman, and the conversation turninc; upon their relationship, the Earl asked him 
how it was that he spelled his name " Fielding," and not " Feilding," like the head 
of the house ? " I cannot tell, my lord," said he, " except it be that my branch of the 
family were the first that knew how to spell.'' 

In 1748, he was made Justice of the Peace for Westminster and Middlesex, an 
office then paid by fees, and very laborious, without being particularly reputable. It 
may be seen from his own words, in the Introduction to the " Voyage," what kind of 
work devolved upon him, and in what a state he was, during these last years ; and 
still more clearly, how he comported himself through all. 

" Whilst I was preparing for my journey, and when I was almost fatigued to death, 
with several long examinations, relating to five different murders, all committed 
within the space of a week, by different gangs of street-robbers, I received a message 
from his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, by Mr. Carrington, the King's messenger, to 
attend his Grace the next morning in Lincoln's Inn Fields, upon some business of 
importance ; but I excused myself from complying with the message, as, besides 
being lame, I was very ill with the great fatigues 1 had lately undergone, added to my 
distemper. 

" His Grace, however, sent Mr. Carrington the very next morning, with another 
summons ; with which, though in the utmost distress, I immediately complied ; but 
the Duke happening, unfortunately for me, to be then particularly engaged, after I 
had waited soraj time, sent a gentleman to discourse with me on the best plan 
which could be invented for these murders and robberies, which were every day com- 
mitted in the streets ; upon which I promised to transmit my opinion m writing to 
his Grace, who, as the gentleman informed me, intended to lay it before the Privy 
Cou'ic'.l. 

" Though this visit cost me a severe cold, I, notwithstanding, set myself down to 
work, and in about fo-ir days sent the Duke as regular a plan as I could form, with 
all the reasons and arguments I could bring to support it, drawn out on several sheets 
of paper ; and soon received a message from the Duke, by Mr. Carrington, acquainting 
ma that my plan was highly approved of, and that all the terms of it would be com- 
plied with. 

" The principal and most material of these terms was the immediately depositing 
600/ in my hands ; at which small charge I undertook to demolish the then reigning 
gangs, and to put the civil policy into sucli order, that no such gangs should ever be 
able for the future to form themselves into bodies, or at least to remain any time 
formidable to tlie public. 

" I had delayed my Bath journey for some time, contrary to the repeated advice 
of my physical acquaintances and the ardent desire of my warmest friends, though 
my distemper was now turned to a deep jaundice ; in which case the Bath waters are 
generally reputed to be almost infallible. But I had the most eager desire to 
demolish this gang of villains and cut-throats. * * « * 

" After some weeks the money was paid at the Treasury, and within a few days 
after 200/. of it had come into my hands, the whole gang of cut-throats was entirely 
dispersed. *■***" 

Further on, he says — 

" I will confess that my private affairs at the beginning of the winter had but a 
gloomy aspect; for I had not plundered the public or the poor of those sums which 
men, who are always ready to plunder both as much as they can, have been pleased 
to suspect me of taking ; on the contrary, by composing, instead of inflaming, the 
quarrels of porters and beggars (which I blush when I say hath not been universally 
practised), and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly 
would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of about 500/. a year of the 
dirtiest m.oney upon eartli, to little more than 300/., a considerable portion of which 
remained with my clerk." 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



521 



eyes lighting up as it were with their old fire — " I did not suffer 
a brave man and an old man to remain a moment in that pos 
ture, but immediately forgave him." Indeed, I think, with his 
noble spirit and unconquerable generosity, Fielding reminds 
one of those brave men of whom one reads in stories of English 
shipwrecks and disasters — of the officer on the African shore, 
when disease has destroyed the crew, and he himself is seized 
by fever, who throws the lead with a death-stricken hand, takes 
the soundings, carries the ship out of the river or off the dan- 
gerous coast, and dies in the manly endeavor — of the wounded 
captain, when the vessel founders, who never loses his heart, 
who eves the danger steadily, and has a cheery word for all, 
until the inevitable fate overwhelms him, and the gallant ship 
goes down. Such a brave and gentle heart, such an intrepid 
and courageous spirit, I love to recognize in the manly, the 
English Harry Fielding. 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 

Roger Sterne, Sterne's father, was the second son of a 
numerous race, descendants of Richard Sterne, Archbishop of 
York, in the reign of James II. ; and children of Simon Sterne 
and Mary Jaques, his wife, heiress of Elvington, near York.* 
Roger was a lieutenant in Handyside's regiment, and engaged 
in Flanders in Queen Anne's wars. He married the daughter 
of a noted sutler — " N.B,, he was in debt to him," his son 
writes, pursuing the paternal biography — and marched through 
the world with this companion ; she following the regiment and 
bringing many children to poor Roger Sterne, The captain 
was an irascible but kind and simple little man, Sterne says, 
and informs us that his sire was run through the body at Gib- 
raltar, by a brother ofiicer, in a duel which arose out of a dis- 
pute about a goose. Roger never entirely recovered from the 
effects of this rencontre, but died presently at Jamaica, whither 
he had followed the drum. 

Laurence, his second child, was born at Clonmel, in Ireland, 
in 1 7 13, and travelled, for the first ten years of his life, on his 

* He came of a Suffolk family — one of whom settled in Nottinghamshire. The 
famous " starling " was actually the family crest. 



522 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



father's march, from barrack to transport, from Ireland to Eng- 
lai.d * 

One relative of his mother's took her and her family under 
shelter for ten months at Mullingar : another collateral de- 
scendant of the Archbishop's housed them for a year at his castle 
near Carrickfergus. Larry Sterne was put to school at Hali- 
fax in England, finally was adopted by his kinsman of Elving- 
ton, and parted company with his father, the Captain, who 
marched on his path of life till he met the fatal goose, which 
closed his career. The most picturesque and delightful parts 
of Laurence Sterne's writings, we owe to his recollections of 
the military life. Trim's montero cap, and Le Fevre's sword, 
and dear Uncle Toby's roquelaure, are doubtless reminiscences 
of the boy, who had lived with the followers of William and 
Marlborough, and had beat time with his little feet to the fifes 
of Ramillies in Dublin barrack-yard, or played with the torn 
flags and halberds of Malplaquet on the parade-ground at 
Clonmel. 

Laurence remained at Halifax school till he was eighteen 
years old. His wit and cleverness appear to have acquired the 
respect of his master here ; for when the usher whipped Lau- 
rence for writing his name on the newly whitewashed school- 
room ceiling, the pedagogue in chief rebuked the understrapper, 
and said that the name should never be effaced, for Sterne was 
a boy of genius, and would come to preferment. 

His cousin, the Squire of Elvington, sent Sterne to Jesus 
College, Cambridge, where he remained five years, and taking 
orders, got, through his uncle's interest, the living of Sutton and 
the prebendary of York. Through his wife's connections, he 
got the living of Stillington. He married her in 1741 ; having 
ardently courted the young lady for some years previously. It 
was not until the young lady fancied herself dying, that she 
made Sterne acquainted with the extent of her liking for him. 
One evening when he was sitting with her, with an almost 
broken heart to see her so ill (the Rev. Mr. Sterne's heart was 
a good deal broken in the course of his life), she said — " My 
dear Laurey, I never can be yours, for I verily believe I have 
not long to live ; but I have left you every shilling of my for- 
tune : " a generosity which overpowered Sterne. She recovered : 
and so they were married, and grew heartily tired of each other 

* " It was in this parish (of Animo, in Wicklow), during our stay, that I had that 
wonderful escape in falling through a mill-race, whilst the mill was going, and of 
being taken up unhurt ; the story is incredible, but known for truth in all that part of 
Ireland, where hundreds of the common people flocked to see me." — Sterne. 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



523 



before many years were over. " Nescio quid est materia cum 
me," Sterne writes to one of his friends (in dog-Latin, and very 
sad dog-Latin too) ; " sed sum fatigatus et aegrotus de mea 
uxore plus quam unquam : " which means, I am sorry to say, 
" I don't know what is the matter with me : but I am more tired 
and sick of my wife than ever."* 

This to be sure was five-and-twenty years after Laurey had 
been overcome by her generosity and she by Laurey's love. 
Then he wrote to her of the delights of marriage, saying, " We 
will be as merry and as innocent as our first parents in Para- 
dise, before the arch fiend entered that indescribable scene. 
The kindest affections will have room to expand in our retire- 
ment : let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, 
the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. has seen 
a polyanthus blow in December ? — Some friendly wall has shel- 
tered it from the biting wind, No planetary influence shall 
reach us, but that which presides and cherishes the sweetest 
flowers. The gloomy family of care and distrust shall be 
banished from our dwelling, guarded by thy kind and tutelar 
deity. We will sing our choral songs of gratitude and rejoice 
to the end of our pilgrimage. Adieu, my L. Return to one 
who languishes for thy society ! — As I take up my pen, my poor 
pulse quickens, my pale face glows, and tears are trickling 
down on my paper as I trace the word L." 

And it is about this woman, with whom he finds no fault but 
that she bores him, that our philanthropist writes, " Sum fatiga- 
tus et aegrotus " — Siwi 77tortaliter in atfiore with somebody else ! 
That fine flower of love, that polyanthus over which Sterne 
snivelled so many tears, could not last for a quarter of a 
century ! 

Or rather it could not be expected that a gentleman with 
such a fountain at command should keep it to arroser one 
homely old lady, when a score of younger and prettier people 
might be refreshed from the same gushing source. t It was in 

* " My wife returns to Toulouse, and proposes to pass the summer at Bignaeres. 
I, on the contrary, go and visit my wife, the church, in Vorkshire. We all live 
the longer, at least the happier, for having things our own way ; this is my conjugal 
maxim. I own 'tis not the best of maxims, but I maintain 'tis not the worst." — 
Sterne's Z,(?^/erj/ 20th January, 1764. 

t In a collection of " Seven Letters by Sterne and his Friends '' (printed for 
private circulation in 1844), is a letter of M. Tollot, who was in France with Sterne 
and his family in 1764. Here is a paragraph : — 

" Nous arrivames le lendemain a Montpellier, oh nous trouvlmes notre ami Mr. 
Sterne, sa femme, sa fille, Mr. Huet, et quelques autres Anglaises. J'eus, je vous 
I'avoue, beaucoup de plaisir en revoyant le bon et agreable Tristram. * « * * 
II avait ete assez longtemps a Toulouse, oil il se serait amuse sans sa femme, qui le 



524 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS, 



December, 1767, that the Rev. Laurence Sterne, the famous 

Shanclean, the charming Yorick, the dehght of the fashionable 
world, the delicious di\ine, for whose sermons the whole polite 
world was subscribing.* the occupier of Rabelais's easy chair, 
only fresh stuffed and more elegant than when in possession of 
the cynical old curate of Meudon,t — the more than rival of the 

poursuivit partout, et qui voulait etre de tout. Ces dispositions dans cette bonne 
dame lui ont fait passer d'assez mauvais momens ; il supporte tous ces desagremens 
avec une patience d'ange." 

About four months after this very characteristic letter, Sterne wrote to the same 
gentleman to whom Tollot had written ; and from his letter we may extract a 
companion paragraph : — 

11 * « * '* y\^jj -vvhich being premised, I have been for eight weeks smitten 
with the tenderest passion that ever tender wight underwent. I wish, dear cousin, 
thou could'st conceive (perhaps thou canst without my wishing it) how deliciously I 
cantered away with it the first month, two up, two down, always upon my hanc/ies, 
along the streets from my hotel to hers, at first once — then twice, then three times a 
day, till at length I was within an ace of setting up my hobby-horse in her stable for 
good and all. I might as well, considering how the enemies of the Lord have 
blasphemed thereupon. The last three weeks w'e were every hour upon the doleful 
ditty of parting ; and thou may'st conceive, dear cousin, how it altered my gait and 
air: for I went and came like any louden'd carl, and did nothing hnt joucr des 
sentimens with her from sun-rising even to the setting of the same ; and now she is 
gone to the south of France ; and to finish the comedie, I fell ill, and broke a vessel 
in my lungs, and half bled to death. Voil&. mon histoire ! '' 

Whether husband or wife had most of the '■'■ patic}ice d''ange'' may be uncertain ; 
but there can be no doubt which needed it most ! 

* " ' Tristram Shandy ' is still a great object of admiration, the man as well as 
the book : one is invited to dmner, where he dines, a fortnight before. As to the 
volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them and humor sometimes hit and 
sometimes missed. Have you read his ' Sermons,' with his own comic figure, from 
a painting by Reynolds, at the head of them .' They are in the style I think most 
proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagination and a sensible heart ; but you 
see him often tottering on the verge of laugliter, and ready to throw his periwig in 
the face of the audience.'' — Gray's Letters: June 22jul, 1760. 

" It having been observed that there was little hospitality in London— Johnson : 
* Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be very 
generally invited in London . The man, Sterne, I have been told, has had engage- 
ments for three months.' Goldsmith : 'And a very dull fellow.' Johnson: 'Why 
no, sir ' '' — Boswell's Lifeof'Jo/nison. 

'' Her [Miss Monckton's] vivacity enchanted the sage, and they used to talk 
together with all imaginable case. A singular instance happened one evening, when 
she insisted that some of Sterne's writings were very pathetic. Johnson bluntly 
denied it. 'lam sure,' said she, 'they have affected me.' 'Why,' said Johnson, 
smiling, and rolling himself about — 'that is, because, dearest, you're a dunce.' 
When she some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said with equal truth and 
politeness, ' Madam, if I ' had thought so, I certainly should not have said it.'' — 
Ibid. 

I" A passage or two from Sterne's " Sermons " may not be without interest here. 
Is not the following, levelled against the cruelties of the Church of Rome, stamped 
with the autograph of the author of the '' Sentimental Journey ? " — 

" To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons of the 
Inquisition — behold religion with mcrcv and justice chained down under her feet, — 
there, sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, propped up with racks and instruments 
of torment. — Hark ! — what a piteous groan ! — See the melancholy wretch who uttered 
it, just brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock-trial, and endure the utmost 
pain that a studied system of religious cruelty has been able to invent. Behold this 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



525 



Dean of St. Patrick's, wrote the above-quoted respectable letter 
to his friend in London : and it was in April of the same year 
that he was pouring out his fond heart to Mrs. Elizabeth 
Draper, wife of " Daniel Draper, Esq., Councillor of Bombay, 
and, in 1775, chief of the factory of Surat — a gentleman very 
much respected in that quarter of the globe." 

" I got thy letter last night, Eliza," Sterne writes, "on my 
return from Lord Bathurst's, where I dined " — (the letter has 
this merit in it, that it contains a pleasant reminiscence of bet- 
ter men than Sterne, and introduces us to a portrait of a kind 
old gentleman) — " I got thy letter last night, Eliza, on my re- 
turn from Lord Bathurst's ; and where I was heard— as I talked 
of thee an hour without intermission — with so much pleasure 
and attention, that the good old Lord toasted your health three 
different times; and now he is in his 85th year, says he hopes 
to live long enough to be introduced as a friend to my fair 
Indian disciple, and to see her eclipse all other Nabobesses as 
much in wealth as she does already in exterior and, what is far 
better " (for Sterne is nothing without his morality), " in interior 
merit. This nobleman is an old friend of mine. You know he 

helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors. His body so wasted with sorrow and 
long confinement, you' II see every nerve and muscle as it suffers. — Observe the last 
movement of that horrid engine. — What convulsions it has thrown him into! Con- 
sider the nature of the posture in which he now lies stretched. — What exquisite 
torture he endures by it. — 'Tis all nature can bear. — Good God 1 see how it keeps 
his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips, willing to take its leave, but not 
suffered to depart. Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell, — dragg'd out of 
it again to meet the flames — and the insults in his last agonies, which this principle — 
this principle, that there can be religion without morality — has prepared for him.'' — 
Sermon zyi/t. 

The next extract is preached on a text to be found in Judges xix. vv. i, 2, 3, 
concernin? a " certain Levite : " — 

" Such a one the Levite wanted to share his solitude and fill up that uncom- 
fortable blank in the heart in such a situation : for, notwithstanding all we meet with 
in books, in many of which, no doubt, there are a good many handsome things said 
upon the sweets of retirement, &c. * * * * yet still ' it is not good for 7nan 
to be alone: ' nor can all which the cold-hearted pedant stuns our ears with upon the 
subject, ever give one answer of satisfaction to the mind; in the midst of the loudest 
vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship ; — 
a good heart wants some object to be kind to — and the best parts of our blood, and 
the purest of our spirits, suffer most under the destitution. 

" Let the torpid monk seek Heaven comfortless and alone. God speed him ! 
For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way : let me be wise and religious, 
but let me be Man ; wherever thy Providence places me, or whatever be the road I 
take to Thee, give me some companion in my journey, be it only to remark to, ' How 
our shadows lengthen as our sun goes down ; ' — to whom I may say, ' How fresh is 
the face of Nature ! how sweet the flowers of the field I how delicious are these 
fruits!' ■' — Sermon iSt/i. 

The first of these passages gives us another drawing of the famous "Captive."' 
The second shows that the same reflection was suggested to the Rev. Laurence by a 
text in Judges as by the fi/le-de-c/iambre. 

Sterne's Sermons were published as those of " Mr. Yorick.'" 



f 2 6 ENGLISH HUMOR IS TS. 

was always the protector of men of wit and genius, and has had 
those of the last century, Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Prior, 
&c., always at his table. The manner in which his notice began 
of me was as singular as it was polite. He came up to me one 
day as I was at the Princess of Wales's court, and said, * I want 
to know you, Mr. Sterne, but it is fit you also should know who 
it is that wishes this pleasure. You have heard of an old Lord 
Bathurst, of whom your Popes and Swifts have sung and spoken 
so much ? I have lived my life with geniuses of that cast ; but 
have survived them ; and, despairing ever to find their equals, 
it is some years since I have shut up my books and closed my 
accounts ; but you have kindled a desire in me of opening them 
once more before I die : which I now do : so go home and dine 
with me.' This nobleman, I say, is a prodigy, for he has all 
the wit and promptness of a man of thirty ; a disposition to be 
pleased, and a power to please others, beyond whatever I knew : 
added to which a man of learning, courtesy, and feeling. 

" He heard me talk of thee, Eliza, with uncommon satisfac- 
tion — for there was only a tliird person, and of sensibility, with 
us : and a most sentimental afternoon till nine o'clock have we 
passed ! * But thou, Eliza, wert the star that conducted and 
enlivened the discourse ! And when I talked not of thee, still 
didst thou fill my mind, and warm every thought I uttered, for 
I am not ashamed to acknowledge I greatly miss thee. Best 
of all good girls ! — the sufferings I have sustained all night in 
consequence of thine, Eliza, are beyond the power of words. 
* * * And so thou hast fixed thy Bramin's portrait over 
thy writing desk, and will consult it in all doubts and difficul- 
ties ? — Grateful and good girl ! Yorick smiles contentedly over 
all thou dost : his picture does not do justice to his own com- 
placency. I am glad your shipmates are friendly beings " (Eliza 
was at Deal, going back to the Councillor at Bombay, and in- 
deed it was high time she should be olif). " You could least 

* " I am glad that you are in love : 'twill cure you at least of the spleen, which 
has a bad effect on both man and woman. I myself must ever have some Dulcinea in 
my head ; it harmonizes the soul ; and in these cases I first endeavor to make the 
lady believe so, or rather, L begin first to make myself believe that I am in love; but 
I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally: '■ V amour ^ say they, 
' ti'est rien suits sentiinejit.' Now, notwithstandmg they make such a pother about 
the 'vord, they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so much for that same 
subject called love."— Sterne's Letters • May 23, 1765. 

" P. S. — My ' Sentimental Journey ' will please Mrs. J and my Lydia " [his 

daughter, afterwards Mrs. Medalle] — " I can answer for those two. It is a subject 
which works well, and suits the frame of mind I have been in for some time past. I 
told you my design in it was to teach us to love the world and our fellow-creatures 
better than we do — so it runs most upon those gentler passions and affections which 
aid so much to it." — Letters [1767.] 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



527 



dispense with what is contrary to your own nature, which is soft 
and gentle, Eliza ; it would civilize savages — though pity were 
it thou should'st be tainted with the office. Write to me, my 
child, thy delicious letters. Let them speak the easy careless- 
ness of a heart that opens itself anyhow, everyhow. Such, 
Eliza, I write to thee ! " (The artless rogue, of course he did !) 
" And so I should ever love thee, most artlessly, most affec- 
tionately, if Providence permitted thy residence in the same 
section of the globe -. for I am all that honor and affection can 
make me ' Thy Bramin.' " 

The Bramin continues addressing Mrs. Draper until the 
departure of the " Earl of Chatham " Indiaman from Deal, on 
the 2d of April, 1767. He is amiably anxious about the fresh 
paint for Eliza's cabin ; he is uncommonly solicitous about 
her companions on board : " I fear the best of your shipmates 
are only genteel by comparison with the contrasted crew with 
which thou beholdest them. So was — you know who — from 
the same fallacy which was put upon your judgment when — but 
I will not mortify you ! " 

" You know who " was, of course, Daniel Draper, Esq., of 
Bombay — a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of 
the globe, and about whose probable health our worthy Bramin 
writes with delightful candor : — 

" I honor you, Eliza, for keeping secret some things which, 
if explained, had been a panegyric on yourself. There is a 
dignity in venerable affliction which will not allow it to appeal 
to the world for pity or redress. Well have you supported 
that character, my amiable, my philosophic friend ! And, 
indeed, I begin to think you have as many virtues as my Uncle 
Toby's widow. Talking of widows — pray, Eliza, if ever you are 
such, do not think of giving yourself to some wealthy Nabob, 
because I design to marry you myself. My wife cannot live 
long, and I know not the woman I should like so well for her 
substitute as yourself. 'Tis true I am ninety-five in constitution, 
and you but twenty-five ; but what I want in youth, I will 
make up in wit and good-humor. Not Swift so loved his Stella, 
Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Saccharissa. Tell me, 
in answer to this, that you approve and honor the proposal." 

Approve and honor the proposal ! The coward was writing 
gay letters to his friends this while, with sneering allusions to 
this poor foolish Bramine. Her ship was not out of the Downs, 
and the charming Sterne was at the " Mount Coffee-house," 
with a sheet of gilt-edged paper before him, offering that pre- 
cious treasure his heart to Lady P , asking whether it gave 



528 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



her pleasure to see him unhappy? whether it added to her 
triumph that her eyes and lips had turned a man into a fool ? — 
quoting the Lord's Prayer, with a horrible baseness of blas- 
phemy, as a proof that he had desired not to be led into temp- 
tation, and swearing himself the most tender and sincere fool 
in the world. It was from his home at Coxwould that he wrote 
the Latin letter, which, I suppose, he was ashamed to put into 
English. I find in my copy of the Letters, that there is a note 
of I can't call it admiration, at Letter 112, which seems to 
announce that there was a No. 3 to whom the wretched worn- 
out old scamp was paying his addresses ; f and the year after, 
having come back to his lodgings in IBond Street, with his 
" Sentimental Journey " to launch upon the town, eager as ever 
for praise and pleasure — as vain, as wicked, as witty, as false 
as he had ever been — death at length seized the feeble wretch, 
and, on the i8th of March, 1768, that " bale of cadaverous 
goods," as he calls his body, was consigned to Pluto.* In his 

* " To Mrs. H . 

Coxwould, Nov. 15, 1767. 
" Now be a good dear woman, my H— — , and execute those commissions well, 
and when I see you I will give you a kiss — there's for you ! But I have something 
else for you which I am fabricating at a great rate, and that is my ' Sentimental 
Journey,' which shall make you cry as much as it has affected me, or 1 will give up 
the business of sentimental writing. * * * 

" I am yours, &e., &c., 

" T. Shandy." 

" To THE Earl of . 

" Cox-wonld, Nov. 28, 1767. 

" My Lord, — 'Tis with the greatest pleasure I take my pen to thank your lord- 
ship for your letter of inquiry about Yorick : he was worn out, both his spirits and 
body, with the ' Sentimental Journey.' 'Tis true, then, an author must feel himself, 
or his reader will not ; but I have torn my whole frame into pieces by my feelings: I 
believe the brain stands as much in need of recruiting as the body. Therefore I shall 
set out for town the twentieth of next month, after having recruited myself a week 
at York. I might indeed solace myself with my wife (who is come from France) ; 
but, in fact, I have long been a sentimental being, whatever your lordship may think 
to the contrary." 

t " In February, 176S, Laurence Sterne, his frame exhausted by long debilitating 
illness, expired at his lodgings in Bond Street, London. There was something in the 
manner of his death singularly resembling the particulars detailed by Mrs. Qnickly 
as attending that oi Falstaff, the compeer of Yorick for infinite jest, however unlike 
in other particulars. As he lay on his bed totally exhausted, he complained that his 
feet were cold, and requested the female attendant to chafe them. She did so, and it 
seemed to relieve him. He complained that the cold came up higher ; and whilst the 
assistant was in the act of chafing his anldes and legs, he expired without a groan. 
It was also remarkable that his death took place much in the manner which he him- 
self had wished ; and that the last offices were rendered him, not in his own house, or 
by the hand of kindred affection, but in an inn, and by strangers. 

" We are well acquainted with Sterne's features and personal appearance, to 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



529 



last letter there is one sign of grace — the real affection with 
which he entreats a friend to be a guardian to his daughter 
Lydia. All his letters to her are artless, kind, affectionate and 
not sentimental ; as a hundred pages in his writings are beau- 
tiful, and full, not of surprising humor merely, but of genuine 
love and kindness. A perilous trade, indeed, is that of a man 
who has to bring his tears and laughter, his recollections, his 
personal griefs and joys, his private thoughts and feelings to 
market, to write them on paper, and sell them for money. 
Does he exaggerate his grief, so as to get his reader's pity 
for a false sensibility .'' feign indignation, so as to establish a 
character for virtue ? elaborate repartees, so that he may pass 
for a wit ? steal from other authors, and put down the theft to 
the credit side of his own reputation for ingenuity and learning? 
feign originality ? affect benevolence or misanthropy ? appeal 
to the gallery gods with claptraps and vulgar baits to catch 
applause ? 

How much of the paint and emphasis is necessary for the 
fair business of the stage, and how much of the rant and rouge 
is put on for the vanity of the actor. His audience trusts him : 
can he trust himself? How much was deliberate calculation 
and imposture — how much was false sensibilitv — and how 
much true feeling ? Where did the lie begin, and did he know 
Vv'here ? and where did the truth end in the art and scheme of 
this man of genius, this actor, this quack ? Some time since, I 
was in the company of a French actor, who began after dhiner, 
and at his own request, to sing French songs of the sort called 
des chansons grivoises, and which he performed admirably, and 
to the dissatisfaction of most persons present. Having finished 
these, he commenced a sentimental ballad — 4t was so charm- 
ingly sung, that it touched all persons present, and especially 
the singer himself, whose voice trembled, whose eyes filled with 
emotion, and who was snivelling and weeping quite genuine 
tears by the time his own ditty was over. I suppose Sterne 
had this artistical sensibility ; he used to blubber perpetually 
in his study, and finding his tears infectious, and that they 
brought him a great popularity, he exercised the lucrative gift 
of weeping : he utilized it, and cried on every occasion. I own 

which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and thin, with a hectic and con- 
sumptive appearance.'' — Sir Walter Scott. 

" It is known that Sterne died in hired lodgings, and I have been told that his 
attendants robbed him even of his gold sleeve-buttons while he was expiring." — Dr. 
Ferriar. 

" He died at No. 41 (now a cheesemonger's) on the west side of Old Bond Street." 
^Handbook of London. 

34 



r^o ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

that I don't value or respect much the cheap dribble of those 
fountains. He fatigues me with his perpetual disquiet and his 
uneasy appeals to my risible or sentimental faculties. He is 
always looking in my face, watching his effect, uncertain whether 
I think him an impostor or not ; posture making, coaxing, and 
imploring me. " See what sensibility I have — own now that 
I'm very clever — do cry now, you can't resist this." The humor 
of Swift and Rabelais, whom he pretended to succeed, poured 
from them as naturally as song does from a bird ; they loose 
no manly dignity with it, but laugh their hearty great laugh out 
of their broad chests as nature bade them. But this man — 
who can make you laugh, who can make you cry too — never 
lets his reader alone, or will permit his audience repose : when 
you are quiet, he fancies he must rouse you, and turns over 
head and heels, or sidles up and whispers a nasty story. The 
man is a great jester, not a great humorist. He goes to work 
systematically and of cold blood ; paints his face, puts on his 
ruff and motley clothes, and lays down his carpet and tumbles 
on it. 

For instance, take the " Sentimental Journey," and see in 
the writer the deliberate propensity to make points and seek 
applause. He gets to " Dessein's Hotel," he wants a carriage 
to travel to Paris, he goes to the inn-yard, and begins what the 
actors call " business " at once. There is that little carriage 
(the desobligeante). " Four months had elapsed since it had 
finished its career of Europe in the corner of Monsieur Dessein's 
coachyard, and having sallied out thence but a vamped-up 
business at first, though it had been twice taken to pieces on 
Mount Sennis, it had not profited much by its adventures, but 
by none so little as the standing so many months unpitied in 
the corner of Monsieur Dessein's coach-yard. Much, indeed, 
was not to be said for it — but something might — and when a 
few words will rescue misery out of her distress, I hate the man 
who can be a churl of them." 

Le tour est fait ! Paillasse has tumbled! Paillasse has 
jumped over the desobligeante^ cleared it, hood and all, and bows 
to the noble company. Does anybody believe that this is a 
real Sentiment? that this luxury of generosity, this gallant 
rescue of Misery — out of an old cab, is genuine feeling ? It is 
as genuine as the virtuous oratory of Joseph Surface when he 
begins, " The man who," &c., &c., and wishes to pass off for a 
saint with his credulous good-humored dupes. 

Our friend purchases the carriage : after turning that noto- 
rious old monk to good account, and effecting (like a soft and 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



531 



good-natured Paillasse as he was, and very free with his money 
when he had it,) an exchange of snuff-boxes with the old Fran- 
ciscan, jogs out of Calais ; sets down in immense figures on the 
credit side of his account the sous he gives away to the Mon- 
treuil beggars ; and, at Nampont, gets out of the chaise and 
whimpers over that famous dead donkey, for which any 
sentimentalist may cry who will. It is agreeably and skilfully 
done — that dead jackass : like M. de Soubise's cook on the 
campaign, Sterne dresses it, and serves it up quite tender and 
with a very piquante sauce. But tears, and fine feelings, and 
a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, and horses 
and feathers, and a procession of mutes, and a hearse with a 
dead donkey inside ! Psha, mountebank ! I'll not give thee 
one penny more for that trick, donkey and all ! 

This donkey had appeared once before with signal effect. 
In 1765, three years before the publication of the " Sentimental 
Journey," the seventh and eighth volumes of " Tristram Shandy" 
were given to the world, and the famous Lyons donkey makes 
his entry in those volumes (pp. 315, 316) : — 

" 'Twas by a poor ass, with a couple of large panniers at his 
back, who had just turned in to collect eleemosynary turnip- 
tops and cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious, with his two fore- 
feet at the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet 
towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to 
go in or no. 

" Now 'tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot 
bear to strike : there is a patient endurance of suffering wrote 
so unaffectedly in his looks and carriage which pleads so 
mightily for him, that it always disarms me, and to that degree 
that I do not like to speak unkindly to him : on the contrary, 
meet him where I will, whether in town or country, in cart or 
under panniers, whether in liberty or bondage, I have ever 
something civil to say to him on my part ; and, as one word 
begets another (if he has as little to do as I), I generally fall 
into conversation with him ; and surely never is my imagination 
so busy as in framing responses from the etchings of his coun- 
tenance ; and where those carry me not deep enough, in flying 
from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an 
ass to think — as well as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, 
it is the only creature of all the classes of beings below me 
with whom I can do this. * * * With an ass I can commune 
forever. 

" ' Come, Honesty,' said I, seeing it was impracticable to 
pass betwixt him and the gate, ' art thou for coming in or going 
out ? ' 



532 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



" The ass twisted his head round to look up the street. 

'" Well ! ' replied I, 'we'll wait a minute for thy driver.' 

" He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wist- 
fully the opposite way. 

" ' I understand thee perfectly,' answered I : * if thou takest 
a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death. Well ! 
a minute is but a minute ; and if it saves a fellow-creature a 
drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill spent.' 

" He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse 
went on, and, in the little peevish contentions between hunger 
and unsavoriness, had dropped it out of his mouth half a 
dozen times, and had picked it up again. ' God help thee 
Jack ! ' said I, ' thou hast a bitter breakfast on't — and many a 
bitter day's labor, and many a bitter blow, I fear, for its wages ! 
'Tis all, all bitterness to thee^whatever life is to others ! And 
now thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter, I dare 
say, as soot ' (for he had cast aside the stem), ' and thou hast 
not a friend i>erhaps in all this world that will give thee a maca- 
roon.' In saying this, I pulled out a paper of 'em, which I had 
just bought, and gave him one ; — and, at this moment that I am 
telling it, my heart smites me that there was more of pleasantry 
in the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon, than 
of benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act. 

" When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to 
come in. The poor beast was heavy loaded — his legs seemed 
to tremble under him— -he hung rather backwards, and, as I 
pulled at his halter, it broke in my hand. He looked up pen- 
sive in my face : 'Don't thrash me with it ; but if you will you 
may.' ' If I do,' said I, ' I'll be d^ — ~.' " 

A critic who refuses to see in this charming description wit, 
humor, pathos, a kind nature speaking, and a real sentiment, 
must be hard indeed to move and to please. A page or two 
farther we come to a description not less beautiful — a land- 
scape and figures, deliciously painted by one who had the 
keenest enjoyment and the most tremulous sensibility : — 

" 'Twas in the road between Nismes and Lunel, where is 
the best IMuscatto wine in all France : the sun was set, they 
had done their work : the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh, 
and the swains were preparing for a carousal. My mule made 
a dead point. ' 'Tis the pipe and tambourine,' said I — ' I never 
will argue a point with one of your family as long as I live ; ' 
so leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch 
and t'other into that. ' I'll take a dance,' said I, 'so stay you 
here.' 



STEJiNE AiVD GOLDSMITH. 



533 



" A sun-burnt daughter of labor rose up from the group to 
meet me as I advanced towards them ; her hair, wliich was of 
a dark chestnut approaching to a black, was tied up in a knot, 
all but a single tress. 

" ' We want a cavalier,' said she, holding out both her hands, 
as if to offer them. ' And a cavalier you shall have,' said I, taking 
hold of both of them. ' We could not have done without you,' 
said she, letting go one hand, with self-taught politeness, and 
leading me up with the other. 

" A lame youth, whom Apollo had recompensed with a pipe, 
and to which he had added a tambourine of his own accord, ran 
sweetly over the prelude, as he sat upon the bank. ' Tie me 
up this tress instantly,' said Nannette, putting a piece of string 
into my hand. It taught me to forget I was a stranger. The 
whole knot fell down — we had been seven years acquainted. 
The youth struck the note upon the tambourine, his pipe fol- 
lowed, and off we bounded, 

" The sister of the youth — who had stolen her voice from 
heaven — sang alternately with her brother. 'Twas a Gascoigne 
roundelay: '• Vivala joia,fidon la tristessa.' The nymphs joined 
in unison, and their swains an octave below them. 

" Viva lajoia was in Nannette's lips, viva la joia in her 
eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt 
us. She looked amiable. Why could I not live and end my 
days thus ? ' Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows ! ' cried I, 
' why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and 
dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with 
this nut-brown maid ? ' Capriciously did she bend her head on 
one side, and dance up insidious. ' Then 'tis time to dance 
off,' quoth I." 

And with this pretty dance and chorus, the volume artfully 
concludes. Even here one can't give the whole description. 
There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that 
were better away, a latent corruption — a hint, as of an impure 
presence.* 

* " With regard to Sterne, and the charge of licentiousness which presses so seri- 
ously upon his character as a writer, I would remark that there is a sort of knowing- 
ness, the wit of which depends, ist, on the modesty it gives pain to; or, 2dly, on the 
innocence and innocent ignorance over which it triumphs ; or, 3dly, on a certain os- 
cillation in the individual's own mind between the remaining good and the encroach- 
ing evil of his nature — a sort of dallying with the devil — a fiuxionary art of combining 
courage and cowardice, as when a man snuffs a candle with his fingers for the first 
time, or better still, perhaps, like that trembling daring with which a child touches a 
hot tea-urn, because it has been forbidden ; so that the mind has its own white and 
black angel ; the same or similar amusement as may be supposed to take place be- 
tween an old debauchee and a prude — the feeling resentment, on the one hand, from a 



534 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to 
freer times and manners than ours, but not all. The foul 
Satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly : the last words 
the famous author wrote were bad and wicked — the last lines 
the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon. I 
think of these past writers and of one who lives amongst us 
now, and am grateful for the innocent laughter and the sweet 
and unsullied page which the author of " David Copperfield " 
gives to my children. 

" Jete sur cette boule, 
Laid, chetif et souffrant ; 
Etouffe dans la foule, 
Faute d'etre assez grand : 

" Une plainte touchante 
De ma bouche sortit. 
Le bon Dieu me dit : Chante, 
Chante, pauvre petit ! 

" Chanter, ou je m'abuse, 
Est ma tache ici bas. 
Tons ceux qu'ainsi j'amuse, 
Ne m"aimeront-ils pas ? " 

In those charming lines of Beranger, one may fancy de- 
scribed the career, the sufferings, the genius, the gentle nature 
of Goldsmith, and the esteem in which we hold him. Who, 
of the millions whom he has amused, doesn't love him ? To 
be the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is for 
a man ! * A wild youth, wayward, but full of tenderness and 

prudential anxiety to preserve appearances and have a character ; and, on the other, an 
inward sympathy with the enemy. We have only to suppose society innocent, and 
then nine-tenths of this sort of wit would be like a stone that falls in snow, making no 
sound, because exciting no resistance ; the remainder rests on its being an offence 
against the good manners of human nature itself. 

" This source, unworthy as it is, may doubtless be combined with wit, drollery 
fancy, and even humor ; and we have only to regret the misalliance ; but that the 
latter are quite distinct from the former, may be made evident by abstracting in our 
imagination the morality of the characters of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, and Trim, 
which are all antagonists to this spurious sort of wit, from the rest of ' Tristram 
Shandy,' and by supposing, instead of them, the presence of two or three callous de- 
bauchees. The result will be pure disgust. Sterne cannot be too severely censured 
for thus using the best dispositions of our nature as the panders and condiments for 
the basest." — Coleridge : Literary Remains, vol. i. pp. 141, 142. 

* " He was a friend to virtue, and in his most playful pages never forgets what Is 
due to it. A gentleness, delicacy and purity of feeling distinguishes whatever he 
wrote, and bears a correspondence to the generosity of a disposition which knew no 
bounds but his last guinea. * * * * 

" The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the pleasing truth with 
which the principal characters are designed, make tlie' Vicar of Wakefield ' one of the 



STERN'S AXD GOLDSMITH. 



535 



affection, quits the country village where his boyhood has been 
passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond longing to see 
the great world out of doors, and achieve name and fortune ; 
and after years of dire struggle, and neglect and poverty, his 
heart turning back as fondly to his native place as it had 
longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, he writes a 
book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home : 
he paints the friends and scenes of his youth, and peoples 
Auburn and Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. Wander 
he must, but he carries away a home-relic with him, and dies 
with it on his breast. His nature is truant ; in repose it longs 
for change : as on the journey it looks back for friends and 
quiet. He passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-mor- 
row, or fn writing yesterday's elegy ; and he would fly away 
this hour, but that a cage and necessity keeps him. What is 
the charm of his verse, of his style, and humor.? His sweet 
regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous 
sympathy, the weakness which he owns ? Your love for him is 
half pity. You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and 
this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind 
vagrant harper ? Whom did he ever hurt ? He carries no 
weapon, save the harp on which he plays to you ; and with 
which he delights great and humble, young and old, the cap- 
tains in the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the women 
and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and 
sings his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet 
story of the " Vicar of Wakefield " * he has found entry into 

most delicious morsels of fictitious composition on which the human mind was ever 
employed. 

''**** We read the ' Vicar of Wakefield ''in youth and in age — we return to it 
again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile 
us to human nature." — Sir Walter Scott. 

* " Now Herder came,'' says Goethe in his Autobiography, relating his first ac- 
quaintance with Goldsmith's masterpiece, " and together with his great knowledge 
brought many other aids, and the later publications besides. Among these he an- 
nounced to us the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' as an excellent work, with the German 
translation of which he would make us acquainted by reading it aloud to us him- 
self. * * * * 

" A Protestant country clergyman is perhaps the most beautiful subject for a 
modern idyl ; lie appears like Melchizedeck, as priest and king in one person. To 
tlie most innocent situation which can be imagined on earth, to that of a husband- 
man, he is, for the most part, united by similarity of occupation as well as by equality 
in family relationships ; he is a father, a master of a family, an agriculturist, and thus 
perfectly a member of the community. On this pure, beautiful earthly foundation 
rests his higher caUing ; to him is it given to guide men through life, to take care of 
their spiritual education, to bless them at all the leading epochs of their existence, to 
instruct, to strengthen, to console them, and if consolation is not sufficient for the 
present, to call up and guarantee the hope of a happier future. Imagine such a man 
with pure human sentiments, strong enough not to deviate from them under any cir- 



536 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



every castle and every hamiet in Europe. Not one of us, how- 
ever busy or hard, but once or twice in our lives has passed an 
evening "'ith him, and undergone the charm of his delightful 
music. 

Goldsmith's father was no doubt the good Doctor Primrose, 
whom we all of us know.* Swift was yet alive, when the little 

cumstances, and by this already elevated above the multitude of whom one cannot 
expect purity and firmness ; give him the learning necessary for his office, as well as 
a cheerful, equable activity, which is even passionate, as it neglects no moment to do 
good — and you will have him well endowecl. But at the same time add the necessary 
limitation, so that he must not only pause in a small circle, but may also, perchance, 
pass over to a smaller ; grant him good-nature, placability, resolution, and everything 
else praiseworthy that springs from a decided character, and over all this a cheerful 
spirit of compliance, and a smiling toleration of his own failings and those of others, 
— then you will have put together pretty well the image of our excellent Wakefield. 

" The delineation of this character on his course of life through joys and sorrows, 
the ever-increasing interest of the story, by the combination of the entirely natural 
with the strange and the singular, make this novel one of the best which has ever been 
written ; besides this, it has the great advantage that it is quite moral, nay, in a pure 
sense. Christian — represents the reward of a good-will and perseverance in the right, 
strengthens an unconditional confidence in God, and attests the final triumph of good 
over evil ; and all this without a trace of cant or pedantry. The author was preserved 
from both of these by an elocution of mind that shows itself througliout in the form 
of irony, by which this little work must appear to us as wise as it is amiable. The 
author, Dr. Goldsmith, has, without question, a great insight into the moral world, into 
its strength and its infirmities ; but at the same time he can thankfully acknowledge 
that he is an Englishman, and reckon highly the advantages which his country and 
his nation afford him. The family, with the delineation of which he occupies himself, 
stands upon one of the last steps of citizen comfort, and yet comes in contact with 
the highest ; its narrow circle, which becomes still more contracted, touches upon the 
great world through the natural and civil course of things ; this little skiff floats on 
the agitated waves of English life, and in weal or woe it has to expect injury or help 
from the vast fleet which sails around it. 

" I may suppose that my readers know this work, and have iit in memory ; who- 
ever hears it named for the first time here, as well as he who is induced to read it 
again, will thank me." — Goethe : Truth a7id Poetry ; from my own Life. 
(English Translation, vol. i. pp. 378, 379.) 

" He seems from infancy to have been compounded of two natures, one bright, 
the other blundering ; or to have had fairy gifts laid in his cradle by the ' good 
people ' who haunted his birthplace, the old goblin mansion on the banks of the 
Inny. 

" He carries with him the wayward elfin spirit, if we may so tenn it, throughout 
his career. His fairy gifts are of no avail at school, academy, or college : they unfit 
him for close study and practical science, and render him heedless of everything that 
does not address itself to his poetical imagination and genial and festive feelings ; 
they dispose him to break away from restraint, to stroll about hedges, green lanes, and 
haunted streams, to revel with jovial companions, or to rove the country like a gipsy 
in quest of odd adventures.* * * * 

" Though his circumstances often compelled him to associate with the poor, they 
never could betray him into companionship with the depraved. His relish for 
humor, and for the study of character, as we have before observed, brought him often 
into convivial company of a vulgar kind ; but he discriminated between their vul- 
garity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole store familiar 
features of life which form the staple of his most popular writings." — Washington 
Irving. 

* " The family of Goldsmith, Goldsmyth, or, as it was occasionally written, Gould 
smith, is of considerable standing in Ireland, and seems always to have held a respec- 



STEHNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



537 



Oliver was born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of 
Longford, in Ireland. In 1730, two years after the child's birth, 
Charles Goldsmith removed his family to Lissoy, in the county 
of Westmeath, that sweet " Auburn " which every person who 
hears me has seen in fancy. Here the kind parson * brought up 
his eight children ; and loving all the world, as his son says, 
fancied all the world loved him. He had a crow'd of poor de- 
pendants besides those hungry children. He kept an open 
table ; round which sat flatterers and poor friends, who laughed 
at the honest rector's many jokes, and ate the produce of his 
seventy acres of farm. Those who have seen an Irish house in 
the present day can fancy that one of Lissoy. The old beggar 
still has his allotted corner by the kitchen turf ; the maimed 
old solcier still gets his potatoes and butter-milk ; the poor 
cotter still asks his honor's charity, and prays God bless his 
reverence for the sixpence ; the ragged pensioner still takes his 
place by right and sufferance. There's still a crowd in the 
kitchen, and a crowd round the parlor-table, profusion, con- 
fusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman comes to London 
to make his fortune, he has a half-dozen of Irish depend- 
ants who take a percentage of his earnings. The good Charles 
Goldsmith f left but little provision for his hungry race when 

table station in society. Its origin is Enc;lish, supjaosed to be derived from that which 
was long settled at Crayford in Kent." — Prior's Life of Goldsmith. 

Oliver's father, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather were clergymen ; 
and two of them married clergymen's daughters. 

* " At church, with meek and unaffected grace. 
His looks adorn'd the venerable place ; 
Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, 
And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray. 
The service past, around the pious man. 
With steady zeal each honest rustic ran ; 
E'en children follow'd with endearing wile. 
And pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile. 
His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, 
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest ; 
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 
But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. 
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form. 
Swells Irom the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." — The Deserted Village. 

*"In May this year (176S), he lost his brother, the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, for 
whom he liad been unable to obtain preferment in the church. * * * « 

" * * * To the curacy of Kilkenny West, the modern stipend of which, forty 
pounds a year, is sufficiently celebrated by his brother's lines. It has been stated 
that Mr. Goldsmith added a school, which, after having been held at more than one 
place in the vicinity, was finally fixed at Lissoy. Here his talents and industry gave 
it celebrity, and under his care the sons of many of the neighboring gentry received 



^^8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

death summoned him ; and one of his daughters being engaged 
to a Squire of rather superior dignity, Charles Goldsmith im- 
poverished the rest of his family to provide the girl with a 
dowry. 

The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and 
ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of 
poor little Oliver's face, when the child was eight years old, 
and left him scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman 
in his father's village taught him his letters, and pronounced 
him a dunce : Paddy Byrne, the hedge-schoolmaster, took him in 
hand ; and from Paddy Byrne, he was transmitted to a clergy- 
man at Elphin. When a child was sent to school in those days, 
the classic phrase was that he was placed under Mr. So-and-so's 
ferule. Poor little ancestors ! It is hard to think how ruthlessly 
you were birched ; and how much of needless whipping and 
tears our small forefathers had to undergo ! A relative — kind 
uncle Contarine, took the main charge of little Noll ; who went 
through his school-days righteously doing as little work as he 
could : robbing orchards, playing at ball, and making his 
pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent it to him. Every- 
body knows the story of that famous " Mistake of a Night," 
when the young schoolboy, provided -with a guinea and a nag, 
rode up to the "best house" in Ardagh, called for the land- 
lord's company over a bottle of wine at supper, and for a hot 
cake for breakfast in the morning ; and found, when he asked 
for the bill, that the best house was Squire Featherstone's, and 
not the inn for which he mistook it. Who does not know every 
story about Goldsmith ? That is a delightful and fantastic 
picture of the child dancing and capering about in the kitchen 
at home, when the old fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness, and 
called him ^sop ; and little Noll made his repartee of " Her- 
alds proclaim aloud this saying — see ^sop dancing and his 
monkey playing." One can fancy a queer pitiful look of hu- 
mor and appeal upon that little scarred face — the funny little 
dancing figure, the funny little brogue. In his life, and his writ- 

their education. A fever breaking out among the boys about 1765, they dispersed 
for a time, but re-assembhng at Athlone, he continued his scholastic labors there 
until the time of his death, which happened, like that of his brother, about the forty- 
fifth year of his age. He was a man of an excellent heart and an amiable disposi- 
tion." — Prior's Goldsmith. 

" Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, 
My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee : 
Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, 
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain." 

— TRe Traveller, 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



539 



ings, which are the honest expression of it, he is constantly be- 
wailing that homely face and person ; anon, he surveys them in 
the glass ruefully, and presently assumes the most comical dig- 
nity. He likes to deck out his little person in splendor and fine 
colors. He presented himself to be examined for ordination in 
a pair of scarlet breeches, and said honestly that he did not like 
to go into the church, because he was fond of colored clothes. 
When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by 
crook a black velvet suit, and looked as big and grand as he 
could, and kept his hat over a patch on the old coat : in better 
days he bloomed out in plum-color, in blue silk, and in new 
velvet. For some of those splendors the heirs and assignees 
of Mr. Filby, the tailor, have never been paid to this day : per- 
haps the kind tailor and his creditor have met and settled the 
little account in Hades.* 

They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dub- 
lin, on which the name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a 
diamond. Whose diamond was it ? Not the young sizar's, who 
made but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, 
penniless, and fond of pleasure : f he learned his way early to 
the pawnbroker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the 
street-singers, who paid him a crown for a poem : and his pleas- 
ure was to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He was 
chastised by his tutor for giving a dance in his room, and took 
the box on the ear so much to heart, that he packed up his all, 
pawned his books and little property, and disappeared from 
college and family. He said he intended to go to America, but 
when his money was spent, the young prodigal came home rue- 
fully, and the good folks there killed their calf — it was but a 
lean one — and welcomed him back. 

After college, he hung about his mother's house, and lived 
for some years the life of a buckeen — passed a month with this 
relation and that, a year with one patron, a great deal of time at 
the public-house. $ Tired of this life, it was resolved that he 

* " When Goldsmith died, half the unpaid bill he owed to Mr. William Filby 
(amounting in all to 79/-) was for clothes supplied to this nephew Hodson.'' — 
Forster's Goldsmith, p. 520. 

As this nephew Hodson ended his days (see the same page) " a prosperous 
Irish gentleman," it is not unreasonable to wish that he had cleared off Mr. Filby's 
bill. 

t " Poor fellow ! He hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, 
but when he saw it on the table.'' — Cumberland's Memoirs. 

\ " These youthful follies, like the fermentation of liquors, often disturb the mind 
only in order to its future refinement : a life spent in phlegmatic apathy resembles 
those liquors which never ferment, and are consequently always muddy." — Gold- 
smith : Memoir of Voltaire. 

" He [Johnson] said ' Goldsmith was a plant that flowered late. There appeared 
nothing remarkable about him when he was young.' " — Boswell. 



54° 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



should go to London, and study at the Temple ; but he got no 
farther on the road to London and the woolsack than Dublin, 
where he gambled away the fifty pounds given to him for his 
outfit, and whence he returned to the indefatigable forgiveness 
of home. Then he determined to be a doctor, and uncle Conta- 
rine helped him to a couple of years at Edinburgh, Then from 
Edinburgh he felt that he ought to hear the famous professors 
of Leyden and Paris, and wrote most amusing pompous letters 
to his uncle about the great Farheim, Du Petit, and Duhamel 
du Monceau, whose lectures he proposed to follow. If uncle 
Contarine believed those letters — if Oliver's mother believed 
that story which the youth related of his going to Cork, with the, 
purpose of embarking for America, of his having paid his 
passage-money, and having sent his kit on board ; of the anony- 
mous captain sailing away with Oliver's valuable luggage, in a 
nameless ship, never to return ; if uncle Contarine and the 
mother at Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been 
a very simj^le pair ; as it was a very simple rogue indeed who 
cheated them. When the lad, after failing in his clerical exam- 
ination, after failing in his plan for studying the law, took leave 
of these projects and of his parents, and set out for Edinburgh, 
he saw mother, and uncle, and lazy Ballymahon, and green 
native turf, and sparkling river for the last time. He was 
never to look on old Ireland more, and only in fancy revisit her. 

" But me not destined such delights to share, 
My prime of life in wandering spent and care, 
Impelled, with steps unceasing, to pursue 
Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view ; 
That like the circle bounding earth and skies 
Allures from far, yet, as 1 follow, flies : 
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone, 
And find no spot of all the world my own." 

I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which ena- 
bled Fielding, in spite of disease, remorse and poverty, always 
to retain a cheerful spirit, and to keep his manly benevolence 
and love of truth intact, as if these treasures had been confided 
to him for the public benefit, and he was accountable to poster- 
ity for their honorable employ ; and a constancy equally happy 
and admirable I think was shown by Goldsmith, whose sweet 
and friendly nature bloomed kindly always in the midst of a 
life's storm, and rain, and bitter weather,* The poor fellow 

* " An ' inspired idiot,' Goldsmith, hangs strangely about him [Johnson], 
* * * * Yet, on the whole, tliere is no evil in the ' gooseberry-fool,' but rathwr 
much good ; of a finer, if of a weaker sort than Johnson's ; and all the more genuine 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



541 



was never so friendless but he could befriend some one; never 
so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust, and 
speak his word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he 
could give that, and make the children happy in the dreary 
London court. He could give the coals in that queer coal- 
scuttle we read of to his poor neighbor ; he could give away his 
blankets in college to the poor widow, and Avarm himself as he 
best might in the feathers : he could pawn his coat to save his 
landlord from jail : when he was a school-usher he spent his 
earnings in treats for the boys, and the good-natured school- 
master's wife said justly that she ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith's 
money as well as the young gentlemen's. When he met his 
pupils in later life, nothing would satisfy the Doctor but he 
must treat them still. " Have you seen the print of me after 
Sir Joshua Reynolds ? " he asked of one of his old pupils. 
" Not seen it ? not bought it ? Sure, Jack, if your picture had 
been published, I'd not have been without it half an hour." 
His purse and his heart were everybody's, and his friends' as 
much as his own. When he was at the height of his reputation, 
and the Earl of Northumberland, going as Lord Lieutenant to 
Ireland, asked if he could be of any service to Dr. Goldsmith, 
Goldsmith recommended his brother, and not himself, to the 
great man. " My patrons," he gallantly said, " are the book- 
sellers, and I want no others." * Hard patrons they were, and 
hard work he did ; but he did not complain much : if in his 
early writings some bitter words escaped him, some allusions 
to neglect and poverty, he withdrew these expressions when his 
works were republished, and better days seemed to open for 
him ; and he did not care to complain that printer or publisher 

that he himself could never become conscious of it, — though unhappily never cease 
attempting to become so : the author of the genuine ' Vicar of Wakefield,' nill he 
will he, must needs fly towards such a mass of genuine manhood.'' — Carlyle's 
Essays (2d ed.), vol. iv. p. 91. 

* " At present, the few poets of England no longer depend on the great for sub- 
sistence ; they have now no other patrons but the public, and the public, collectively 
considered, is a good and a generous master. It is indeed too frequently mistaken as 
to the merits of every candidate for favor ; but to make amends, it is never mistaken 
long. A performance indeed maybe forced for a time into reputation, but, destitute 
of real merit, it soon sinks ; time, the touchstone of what is truly valuable, will soon 
discover the fraud, and an author should never arrogate to himself any share of suc- 
cess till his works have been read at least ten years with satisfaction. 

" A man of letters at present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly sensible of 
their value. Every polite member of the community, by buying what he writes, 
contributes to reward him. The ridicule, therefore, of living jn a garret might have 
been wit in the last age, but continues such no longer, because no longer true. A 
writer of real merit now may easily be rich, if his heart be set only on fortune : and 
for those who have no merit, it is but fit that such should remain in merited 
obscurity." — GOLDSMITH : Citizen of the World, Let. 84. 



542 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



had overlooked his merit, or left him poor. The Court face 
was turned from honest Oliver, the Court patronized Beattie ; 
the fashion did not shine on him — fashion adored Sterne.* 
Fashion pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of comedy of 
his day. A little — not ill-humor, but plaintiveness — a little 
betrayal of wounded pride which he showed render him not 
the less amiable. The author of the " Vicar of Wakefield " 
had a right to protest when Newbery kept back the MS. for 
two years ; had a right to be a little peevish with Sterne ; a 
little angry when Colman's actors declined their parts in his 
delightful comedy, when the manager refused to have a scene 
painted for it, and pronounced its damnation before hearing. 
He had not the great public with him ; but he had the noble 
Johnson, and the admirable Reynolds, and the great Gibbon, 
and the great Burke, and the great Fox — friends and admirers 
illustrious indeed, as famous as those who, fifty years before, 
sat round Pope's table. 

Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith's buoyant temper 
kept no account of all the pains which he endured during the 
early period of his literary career. Should any man of letters 
in our day have to bear up against such, heaven grant he may 
come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure kind 
heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast. 
The insults to which he had to submit are shocking to read of 
— slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting 
his commonest motives and actions ; he had his share of these, 
and one's anger is roused at reading of them, as it is at seeing 
a woman insulted or a child assaulted, at the notion that a 
creature so very gentle and weak, and full of love, should have 

* Goldsmith attacked Sterne obviously enough, censuring his indecency, and 
slighting his wit, and ridiculing his manner, in the 53d letter in the " Citizen of the 
World.''' 

" As in common conversation," says he, "the best way to make the audience 
laugh is by first laughing yourself ; so in writing, the properest manner is to show an 
attempt at humor, which will pass upon most for humor in reality. To effect 
this, readers must be treated with the most perfect familiarity ; in one page the 
author is to make them a low bow, and in the next to pull them by the nose; 
he must talk in riddles, and then send' them to bed in order to dream for the solu- 
tion,'' &c. 

Stern-i's humorous mot on the subject of the gravest part of the charges, then, as 
now, made against him, may perhaps be quoted here, from the excellent, the respect- 
able Sir Walter Scott : — 

" Soon after ' Tristram ' had appeared, Sterne asked a Yorkshire lady of fortune 
and condition whether she had read his book. ' I have not, Mr. Sterne,' was the 
answer ; ' and to be plain with you, I am informed it is not proper for female perusal.' 
' My dear good lady,' replied the author, ' do not be gulled by such stories ; the book 
is like your young heir there ' (pointing to a child of three years old, who was rolling 
on the carpet in his white tunic) : ' he shows at times a good deal that is usually 
concealed, but it is all in perfect innocence.' " 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. ^43 

had to suffer so. And he had worse than insult to undergo — < 
to own to fault and deprecate the anger of ruffians. There is 
a letter of his extant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in which 
poor Goldsmith is forced to confess that certain books sent by 
Griffiths are in the hands of a friend from whom Goldsmith 
had been forced to borrow money. " He was wild, sir," John- 
son said, speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with his great, 
wise benevolence and noble mercifulness of heart — " Dr. Gold- 
smith was wild, sir ; but he is so no more." Ah ! if we pity the 
good and weak man who suffers undeservedly, let us deal very 
gently with him from whom misery extorts not only tears, but 
shame ; let us think humbly and charitably of the human nature 
that suffers so sadly and falls so low. Whose turn may it be 
to-morrow? What weak heart, confident before trial, may not 
succumb under temptation invincible ? Cover the good man 
who has been vanquished — cover his face and pass on. 

For the last half-dozen years of his life. Goldsmith was far 
removed from the pressure of any ignoble necessity : and in 
the receipt, indeed, of a pretty large income from the book- 
sellers his patrons. Had he lived but a few years more, his 
public fame would have been as great as his private reputation, 
and he might have enjoyed alive a part of that esteem which his 
country has ever since paid to the vivid and versatile genius 
who has touched on almost every subject of literature, and 
touched nothing that he did not adorn. Except in rare in- 
stances, a man is known in our profession, and esteemed as a 
skilful workman, years before the lucky hit which trebles his 
usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the strength 
of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for backers 
and friends the most illustrious literary men of his time,* fame 
and prosperity might have been in store for Goldsmith, had 
fate so willed it : and, at forty-six, had not sudden disease 
carried him off. I say prosperity rather than competence, for 
it is probable that no sum could have put order into his affairs 
or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It must 
be remembered that he owed 2,000/. when he died. " Was 
ever poet," Johnson asked, " so trusted before ? " As has 

* " Goldsmith told us that he was now bus}' in writing a Natural History ; and 
that he might have full leisure for it, he had taken lodgings at a farmer's house, near 
to the six-mile stone in the Edgware Road, and had carried down his books in two 
returned postchaises. He said he believed the farmer's family thought him an odd 
character, similar to that in which the Spectator appeared to his landlady and her 
children; he was The Gentleman. Mr. Mickle, the translator of the 'Lusiad,' and 
I, went to visit him at this place a few days aftei-wards. He was not at home ; but 
having a curiosity to see his apartment, we went in, and found curious scraps of 
descriptions of animals scrawled upon the wall with a blacklead pencil." — Boswell. 



544 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



been the case with many another good fellow of his nation, his 
life was tracked and his substance wasted by crowds of hungry 
beggars and lazy dependants. If they came at a lucky time 
(and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, 
and watched his pay-day), he gave them of his money : if they 
begged on empty-purse days he gave them his promissory bills : 
or he treated them to a tavern where he had credit ; or he 
obliged them with an order upon honest Mr. Filby for coats, 
for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until the shears 
of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under a load 
of debt and labor, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors, 
running from a hundred poor dependants, whose appealing 
looks were perhaps the hardest of all pains for him to bear, 
devising fevered plans for the morrow, new histories, new com- 
edies, all sorts of new literary schemes, flying from all these 
into seclusion, and out of seclusion into pleasure — at last, at 
five and forty, death seized him and closed his career.* I 
have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which 
were his, and passed up the staircase, which Johnson, and Burke, 
and Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Gold- 
smith — the stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly 
when they heard that the greatest and most generous of all 
men was dead within the black oak door.f Ah, it was a dif- 
ferent lot from that for which the poor fellow sighed, when he 
wrote with heart yearning for home those most charming of all 
fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn — 

" Here, as I take my solitary rounds, 
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds, 

* " When Goldsmith was dying, Dr. Turton said to him, ' Your pulse is in 
greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of fever which you have ; is your 
mind at ease ? ' Goldsmith answered it was not." — Dr. Johnson (in Bos-well). 

" Chambers, you find, is gone far, and poor Goldsmith is gone much further. He 
died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear of distress. He had raised 
money and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. But 
let not his failings be remembered; he was a very great man." — Dr. Johnson to 
Boszivll, July '~,fh, 1774. 

t " When Burke was told [of Goldsmith's death] he burst into tears. Reynolds 
was in his painting-room when the messenger went to him ; but at once he laid his 
pencil aside, which in times of great family distress he had not been known to do, 
left his painting-room, and did not re-enter it that day. 

" The staircase of Brick Court is said to have been filled with mourners, the 
reverse of domestic ; women without a home, without domesticity of any kind, with 
no friend but him they had come to weep for : outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked 
city, to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had 
domestic mourners, too. His coffin was re-opened at the request of Miss Horncck 
and her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for them !) that a lock 
might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn's possession when she died, after 
nearly seventy years," — Forster's Goldsmith, 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 545 

And, many a year elapsed, return to view 
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 
Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train, 
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. 

In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close. 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose ; 
I still had hopes — for pride attends us still — 
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill. 
Around my fire an evening group to draw, 
And tell of all I felt and all I saw ; 
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, 
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew — 
I still had hopes — my long vexations past, 
Here to return, and die at home at last. 

blest retirement, friend to life's decline ! 
Retreats from care that never must be mine — 
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, 
A youth of labor with an age of ease ; 
Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
For him no wretches born to work and weep 
Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep ; 
No surly porter stands in guilty state 
To spurn imploring famine from the gate : 
But on he moves to meet his latter end. 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend ; 
Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay, 
Whilst resignation gently slopes the way ; 
And all his prospects brightening to the last. 
His heaven commences ere the world be past." 

In these verses, I need not say with what melody, with 
what touching truth, with what exquisite beauty of compari- 
son — as indeed in hundreds more pages of the writings of this 
honest soul — the whole character of the man is told — his 
bumble confession of faults and weakness ; his pleasant little 
vanity, and desire that his village should admire him ; his simple 
scheme of good in which everybody was to be happy — no beg- 
gar was to be refused his dinner — nobody in fact was to work 
much, and he to be the harmless chief of the Utopia, and the 
monarch of the Irish Yvetot. He would have told again, and 
without fear of their failing, those famous jokes * which had 

* " Goldsmith's incessant desire of being conspicuous in company was the 
occasion of his sometimes appearing to such disadvantage, as one should hardly have 
supposed possible in a man of his genius. When his literary reputation had risen 
deservedly high, and his society was much courted, he became very jealous of the 
extraordinary attention which was everywhere paid to Johnson. One evening, in a 
circle of wits, he found fault with me for talking of Johnson as entitled to the honor 

35 



546 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

hung fire in London ; he would have talked of his great friends 
of the Club — of my Lord Clare and my Lord Bishop, my 
Lord Nugent — sure he knew them intimately, and was hand 
and glove with some of the best men in town — and he would 
have spoken of Johnson and of Burke, and of Sir Joshua who 
had painted him — and he would have told wonderful sly stories 
of Ranelagh and the Pantheon, and the masquerades at Mad- 
ame Cornelis' ; and he would have toasted, with a sigh, the 
Jessamy Bride — the lovely Mary Horneck. 

The figure of that charming young lady forms one of the 
prettiest recollections of Goldsmith's Hfe. She and her beauti- 
ful sister, who married Bunbury, the graceful and humorous 
amateur artist of those days, when Gilray had but just begun 
to try his powers^ were among the kindest and dearest of Gold- 
smith's many friends, cheered and pitied him, travelled abroad 
with him, made him welcome at their home, and gave him 

of unquestionable superiority. ' Sir,' said he, ' you are for making a monarchy of 
what should be a republic' 

" He was still more mortified, when, talking in a company with fluent vivacity, 
and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all present, a German who sat next 
him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped 
him, saying, ' Stay, stay — Toctor Shonson is going to zay zomething.' This was 
no doubt very provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently 
mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation. 

" It may also be observed that Goldsmith was sometimes content to be treated 
with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be consequential and important. 
An instance of this occurred in a small particular. Johnson had a way of contracting 
the names of his friends, as Beauclerk, Beau ; Boswell, Bozzy. * * * * i 
remember one day, when Tom Davies was telling that Dr. Johnson said, — ' We are 
all in labour for a name to Goldfs play,' Goldsmith seemed displeased that such a 
liberty should be taken with his name, and said, ' I have often desired him not to 
call me Goldy.' " 

This is one of several of Boswell's depreciatory mentions of Goldsmith — which 
may well irritate biographers and admirers — and also those who take that more kindly 
and more profound view of Boswell's own character, which was opened up by Mr. 
Carlyle's famous article on his book. No wonder that Mr. Irving calls Boswell an 
" incarnation of toadyism.'' And the worst of it is, that Johnson himself has 
suffered from this habit of the Laird of Auchinleck's. People are apt to forget under 
what Boswellian stimulus the great Doctor uttered many hasty things: — things no 
more indicative of the nature of the depths of his character than the phosphoric 
gleaming of the sea, when struck at night, is indicative of radical corruption of nature ! 
In truth, it is clear enough on the whole that both Johnson and Goldsmith appre- 
ciated each other, and that they mutually knew it. They were — as it were, tripped 
up and flung against each other, occasionally, by the blundering and silly gambolling 
of people in company. 

Something must be allowed for Boswell's " rivalry for Johnson's good graces '' 
with Oliver (as Sir Walter Scott has remarked), for Oliver was intimate with the 
Doctor before his biographer was, — and, as we all remember, marched off with him 
to " take tea with Mrs. Williams " before Boswell had advanced to that honorable 
degree of intimacy. But, in truth, Boswell — though he perhaps showed more talent 
in his delineation of the Doctor than is generally ascribed to him — had not faculty 
to take a fair view of two great men at a time. Besides, as Mr. Forster justly 
remarks, " he was impatient of Goldsmith from the first hour of their acquaintance." 
— Life and Adventures, p. 292. 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 54^ 

many a pleasant holiday. He bought his finest clothes to 
figure at their country house at Barton — he wrote them droll 
verses. They loved him, laughed at him, played him tricks 
and made him happy. He asked for a loan from Garrick, and 
Garrick kindly supplied him, to enable him to go to Barton : 
but there were to be no more holidays, and only one brief 
struggle more for poor Goldsmith. A lock of his hair was 
taken from the coffin and given to the Jessamy Bride. She 
lived quite into our time. Hazlitt saw her an old lady, but 
beautiful still, in Northcote's painting-room, who told the eager 
critic how proud she always was that Goldsmith had admired 
her. The younger Colman has left a touching reminiscence of 
him. Vol. i. 63, 64. 

" I was only five years old," he says, " when Goldsmith 
took me on his knee one evening whilst he was drinking coffee 
with my father, and began to play with me, which amiable act 
I returned, with the ingratitude of a peevish brat, by giving him 
a very smart slap on the face : it must have been a tingler, for 
it left the marks of my spiteful paw on his cheek. This infan- 
tile outrage was followed by summary justice, and I was locked 
up by my indignant father in an adjoining room to undergo 
solitary imprisonment in the dark. Here I began to howl and 
scream most abominably, which was no bad step towards my 
liberation, since those who were not inclined to pity me might 
be likely to set me free for the purpose of abating a nuisance. 

" At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me 
from jeopardy, and that generous friend was no other than the 
man I had so wantonly molested by assault and battery — it was 
the tender-hearted Doctor himself, with a lighted candle in his 
hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was still par- 
tially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked and 
sobbed as he fondled and soothed, till I began to brighten. 
Goldsmith seized the propitious moment of returning good-hu- 
mor, when he put down the candle and began to conjure. He 
placed three hats, which happened to be in the room, and a 
shilling under each. The shillings he told me were England, 
France, and Spain. ' Hey presto cockalorum ! ' cried the 
Doctor, and lo, on uncovering the shillings, which had been 
dispersed each beneath a separate hat, they were all found con- 
gregated under one. I was no politician at five years old, and 
therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolution 
which brought England, France, and Spain all under one 
crown ; but, as also I was no conjuror, it amazed me beyond 
measure. ***** From that time, whenever the Doctor 



548 ENGLISH HUM ORIS TS. 

came to visit my father, ' I plucked his gown to share the good 
man's smile ;' a game at romps constantly ensued, and we were 
always cordial friends and merry playfellows. Our unequal 
companionship varied somewhat as to sports as I grew older ; 
but it did not last long : my senior playmate died in his forty- 
fifth year, when I had attained my eleventh. * * * in all 
the numerous accounts of his virtues and foibles, his genius 
and absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance of the 
world, his ' compassion for another's woe' was always pre- 
dominant ; and my trivial story of his humoring a froward 
child weighs but as a feather in the recorded scale of his be- 
nevolence. 

Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like — but mer- 
ciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of 
our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of 
the poor pensioners weeping at his grave ; think of the noble 
spirits that admired and deplored him ; think of the righteous 
pen that wrote his epitaph — and of the wonderful and unani- 
mous response of affection with which the world has paid back 
the love he gave it. His humor delighting us still : his song 
fresh and beautiful as when first he charmed with it : his words 
in all our mouths, his very weaknesses beloved and familiar — his 
benevolent spirit seems still to smile upon us : to do gentle 
kindnesses : to succor with sweet charity : to soothe, caress, 
and forgive : to plead with the fortunate for the unhappy and 
the poor. 

His name is the last in the list of those men of humor who 
have formed the themes of the discourses which you have heard 
so kindly, • 

Long before I had ever hoped for such an audience, or 
dreamed of the possibility of the good-fortune which has brought 
me so many friends, I was at issue with some of my literary 
brethren upon a point — which they held from tradition I think 
rather than experience — that our profession was neglected in 
this country ; and that men of letters were ill-received and held 
in slight esteem. It would hardly be grateful of me now to 
alter my old opinion that we do meet with good-wilL and kind- 
ness, with generous helping hands in the time of our necessity, 
with cordial and friendly recognition. What claim had any one 
of these of whom I have been speaking, but genius ? What re- 
turn of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to all ? 

What punishment befell those who were unfortunate 
among them, but that which follows reckless habits and careless 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 



549 



lives ? For these faults a wit must sufter like the dullest prodi- 
gal that ever ran in debt. He must pay the tailor if he wears 
the coat ; his children must go in rags if he spends his money 
at the tavern ; he can't come to London and be made Lord 
Chancellor if he stops on the road and gambles away his last 
shilling at Dublin. And he must pay the social penalty of 
these follies too, and expect that the world will shun the man of 
bad habits, that women will avoid the man of loose life, that 
prudent folks will close their doors as a precaution, and before 
a demand should be made on their pockets by the needy prodi- 
gal. With what difficulty had any one of these men to con- 
tend, save that eternal and mechanical one of want of means 
and lack of capital, and of which thousands of young lawyers, 
young doctors, young soldiers and sailors, of inventors, manu- 
facturers, shopkeepers, have to complain ? Hearts as brave 
and resolute as ever beat in the breast of any wit or poet, sicken 
and break daily in the vain endeavor and unavailing struggle 
against life's difficulty. Don't we see daily ruined inventors, 
gray-haired midshipmen, baulked heroes, blighted curates, bar- 
risters pining a hungry life out in chambers, the attorneys never 
mounting to their garrets, whilst scores of them are rapping at 
the door of the successful quack below ? If these suffer, who 
is the author, that he should be exempt ? Let us bear our ills 
with the same constancy with which others endure them, accept 
our manly part in life, hold our own, and ask no more. I can 
conceive of no kings or laws causing or curing Goldsmith's im- 
providence, or Fielding's fatal love of pleasure, or Dick Steele's 
mania for running races with the constable. You never can 
outrun that sure-footed officer — not by any swiftness or by 
dodges devised by any genius, however great ; and he carries 
off the Tatler to the sponging-house, or taps the Citizen of the 
World on the shoulder as he would any other mortal. 

Does society look down on a man because he is an author ? 
I suppose if people want a buffoon they tolerate him only in so 
far as he is amusing ; it can hardly be expected that they should 

. respect him as an equal. Is there to be a guard of honor pro- 
vided for the author of the last new novel or poem ? how long is 
he to reign, and keep other potentates out of possession ? He re- 
tires, grumbles, and prints a lamentation that literature is de- 
spised. If Captain A. is left out of Lady B.'s parties he does 
not state that the army is despised : if Lord C. no longer asks 

• Councellor D. to dinner, Counsellor D. does not announce that 
the bar is insulted. He is not fair to society if he enters it 
with this suspicion hankering about him ; if he is doubtful 



55° 



ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 



about his reception, how hold up his head honestly, and look 
frankly in the face that world about which he is full of suspi- 
cion ? Is he place-hunting, and thinking in his mind that he 
ought to be made an Ambassador, like Prior, or a Secretary 
of State, like Addison ? his pretence of equality falls to the 
ground at once : he is scheming for a patron, not shaking the 
hand of a friend, when he meets the world. Treat such a man 
as he deserves ; laugh at his buffoonery, and give him a dinner 
and a hon jour ; laugh at his self-sufficiency and absurd assump- 
tions of superiority, and his equally ludicrous airs of martyrdom : 
laugh at his flattery and his scheming, and buy it, if it's worth 
the having. Let the wag have his dinner and the hireling his 
pay, if you want him, and make a profound bow to the grand 
homme incotnpris, and the boisterous martyr, and show him the 
door. The great world, the great aggregate experience, has 
its good sense, as it has its good-humor. It detects a pretender, 
as it trusts a loyal heart. It is kind in the main : how should 
it be otherwise than kind, when it is so wise and clear-headed ? 
To any literary man who says, " It despises my profession," I 
say, with all my might — no, no, no. It may pass over your 
individual case — how many a brave fellow has failed in the race 
and perished unknown in the struggle ! — but it treats you as 
you merit in the main. If you serve it, it is not unthankful ; if 
you please, it is pleased ; if you cringe to it, it detects you, and 
scorns you if you are mean ; it returns your cheerfulness with 
its good-humor; it deals not ungenerously with your weakness ; 
it recognizes most kindly your merits ; it gives you a fair place 
and fair play. To any one of those men of whom we have 
spoken was it in the main ungrateful ? A king might refuse 
Goldsmith a pension, as a publisher might keep his master- 
piece and the delight of all the world in his desk for two 
years ; but it was mistake, and not ill-will. Noble and 
illustrious names of Swift, and Pope, and Addison ! dear and 
honored memory of Goldsmith and Fielding ! kind friends, 
teachers, benefactors ! who shall say that our country, which 
continues to bring such an unceasing tribute of applause, admi- 
ration, love, sympathy, does not do honor to the Uterary calling 
in the honor which it bestows upon you ! 



THE 

SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

By MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH. 



THE 
SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



I. 

OF THE DISINTERMENT OF NAPOLEON AT 
ST. HELENA. 

My Dear , — It is no easy task in this world to distinguish 

between what is great in it, and what is mean ; and many and 
many is the puzzle that I have had in reading History (or the 
works of fiction which go by that name), to know whether I 
should laud up to the skies, and endeavor, to the best of my 
small capabilities, to imitate the remarkable character about 
whom I was reading, or whether I should fling aside the book 
and the hero of it, as things altogether base, unworthy, laugh- 
able, and get a novel, or a game of billiards, or a pipe of tobacco, 
or the report of the last debate in the House, or any other 
employment which would leave the mind in a state of easy 
vacuity, rather than pester it with a vain set of dates relating 
to actions which are in themselves not worth a fig, or with a 
parcel of names of people whom it can do one no earthly good 
to remember. 

It is more than probable, my love, that you are acquainted 
with what is called Grecian and Roman history, chiefly from 
perusing, in very early youth, the little sheepskin-bound vol- 
umes of the ingenious Dr. Goldsmith, and have been indebted 
for your knowledge of our English annals to a subsequent study 
of the more voluminous works of Hume and Smollett. The 
first and the last-named authors, dear Miss Smith, have written 
each an admirable histor}'^, — that of the reverend Dr. Primrose, 
Vicar of Wakefield, and that of Mr. Robert Bramble, of Bramble 



554 ^^^ SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

Hall — in both of which works you will find true and instructive 
pictures of human life, and which you may always think over 
with advantage. But let me caution you against putting any 
considerable trust in the other works of these authors, which 
were placed in your hands at school and afterwards, and in 
which you were taught to believe. Modern historians, for the 
most part, know very little, and, secondly, only tell a little of 
what they know. 

As for those Greeks and Romans whom you have read of 
in "sheepskin," were you to know really what those monsters 
were, you would blush all over as red as a hollyhock, and put down 
the history-book in a fury. Many of our English worthies are no 
better. You are not in a situation to know the real characters of 
any one of them. They appear before you in their public 
capacities, but the individuals you know not. Suppose, for 
instance, your mamma had purchased her tea in the Borough 
from a grocer living there by the name of Greenacre : suppose 
you had been asked out to dinner, and the gentleman of the 
house had said : " Ho ! Francois ! a glass of champagne for Miss 
Smith ; " — Courvoisier would have served you just as any other 
footman would : you would never have known that there was 
anything extraordinary in these individuals, but would have 
thought of them only in their respective public characters of 
Grocer and Footman. This, Madam, is History, in which a man 
always appears dealing with the world in his apron, or his laced 
livery, but which has not the power or the leisure, or, perhaps, 
is too high and mighty to condescend to follow and study him 
in his privacy. Ah, my dear, when big and little men come to 
be measured rightly, and great and small actions to be weighed 
properly, and people to be stripped of their royal robes, beggars' 
rags, generals' uniforms, seedy out-at-elbowed coats, and the 
like — or the contrary say, when souls come to be stripped of 
their wicked deceiving bodies, and turned out stark naked as 
they were before they were born — what a strange startling sight 
shall we see, and what a pretty figure shall some of us cut ! 
Fancy how we shall see Pride, with his Stultz clothes and pad- 
ding pulled off, and dwindled down to a forked radish ! Fancy 
some Angelic virtue, whose white raiment is suddenly whisked 
over his head, showing us cloven feet and a tail ! Fancy Humil- 
ity, eased of its sad load of cares and want and scorn, walking 
up to the very highest place of all, and blushing as he takes it I 
Fancy, — but we must not fancy such a scene at all, which would 
be an outrage on public decency. Should we be any better than 
our neighbors ? No, certainly. And as we can't be virtuous 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



555 



let us be decent. Fig-leaves are a very decent, becoming wear, 
and have been now in fashion for four thousand years. And 
so, my dear, History is written on fig-leaves. Would you have 
anything further ? Oh fie ! 

Yes, four thousand years ago, that famous tree was planted. 
At their very first lie, our first parents made for it, and there it is 
still the great Humbug Plant, stretching its wide arms, and shel- 
tering beneath its leaves, as broad and green as ever, all the 
generations of men. Thus, my dear, coquettes of your fascina- 
ting sex cover their persons with figgery, fastastically arranged, 
and call their masquerading, modesty. Cowards fig themselves 
out fiercely as " salvage men," and make us believe that they are 
warriors. Fools look very solemnly out from the dusk of the 
leaves, and we fancy in the gloom that they are sages. And 
many a man sets a great wreath about his pate and struts abroad 
a hero, whose claims we would all of us laugh at, could we but 
remove the ornament and see his numskull bare. 

And such — (excuse my sermonizing) — such is the constitution 
of mankind, that men have, as it were, entered into a compact 
among themselves to pursue the fig-leaf system a routrana\ and 
to cry down all who oppose it. Humbug they will have. Hum- 
bugs themselves, they will respect humbugs. Their daily vict- 
uals of life must be seasoned with humbug. Certain things are 
there in the world that they will not allow to be called by their 
right names, and will insist upon our admiring, whether we will 
or no. Woe be to the man who would enter too far into the 
recesses of that magnificent temple where our Goddess is en- 
shrined, peep through the vast embroidered curtains indiscreetly, 
penetrate the secret of secrets, and expose the Gammon of Gam- 
mons ! And as you must not peer too curiously within, so nei- 
ther must you remain scornfully without. Humbug-worshippers, 
let us come into our great temple regularly and decently : take 
our seats, and settle our clothes decently ; open our books, and go 
through the service with decent gravity ; listen, and be decently 
affected by the expositions of the decent priest of the place ; 
and if by chance some straggling vagabond, loitering in the sun- 
shine out of doors, dares to laugh or to sing, and disturb the 
sanctified dulness of the faithful ; — quick ! a couple of big beadles 
rush out and belabor the wretch, and his yells make our devo- 
tions more comfortable. 

Some magnificent religious ceremonies of this nature are at 
present taking place in France ; and thinking that you might 
perhaps while away some long winter evening with an account 
of them, I have compiled the following pages for your use. 



256 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

Newspapers have been filled, for some days past, with details 
regarding the Saint Helena expedition, many pamphlets have 
been published, men go about crying little books and broad- 
sheets filled with real or sham particulars ; and from these scarce 
and valuable documents the following pages are chiefly compiled. 

We must begin at the beginning ; premising, in the first place, 
that Monsieur Guizo^, when French Ambassador at London, 
waited upon Lord Palmerston with a request that the body of 
the Emperor Napoleon should be given up to the French nation, 
in order that it might find a final resting-place in French earth. 
To this demand the English Government gave a ready assent ; 
nor was there any particular explosion of sentiment upon either 
side, only some pretty cordial expressions of mutual good-will. 
Orders were sent out to St. Helena that the corpse should be 
disinterred in due time, when the French exjDedition had arrived 
in search of it, and that every respect and attention should be 
paid to those who came to carry back to their country the body 
of the famous dead warrior and sovereign. 

This matter being arranged in very few words (as in England, 
upon most points, is the laudable fashion), the French Cham- 
bers began to debate about the place in which they should bury 
the body when they got it ; and numberless pamphlets and 
newspapers out of doors joined in the talk. Some people there 
were who had fought and conquered and been beaten with the 
great Napoleon, and loved him and his memory. Many more were 
there who, because of his great genius and valor, felt exces- 
sively proud in their own particular persons, and clamored 
for the return of their hero. And if there were some few indi- 
viduals in this great hot-headed, gallant, boasting, sublime, absurd 
French nation, who had taken a cool view of the dead Emperor's 
character ; if, perhaps, such men as Louis Philippe, and Mon- 
sieur A. Thiers, Minister and Deputy, and Monsieur Francois 
Guizot, Deputy and Elxcellency, had, from interest or conviction, 
opinions at all differing from those of the majority : why, they 
knew what was what, and kept their opinions to themselves, 
coming with a tolerably good grace and flinging a few handfuls 
of incense upon the altar of the popular idol. 

In the succeeding debates, then, various opinions were given 
w-ith regard to the place to be selected for the Emperor's sepul- 
ture, " Some demanded," says an eloquent anonymous Captain 
in the Navy who has written an " Itinerary from Toulon to St. 
Helena," " that the coffin should be deposited under the bronze 
taken from the enemy by the French army — under the Column 
of the Place Vendome. The idea was a fine one. This is the 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



557 



most glorious monument that was ever raised in a conqueror's 
honor. This column has been melted out of foreign cannon. 
These same cannons have furrowed the bosoms of our braves 
with noble cicatrices ; and this metal — conquered by the 
soldier first, by the artist afterwards — has allowed to be im- 
printed on its front its own defeat and our glory. Napoleon 
might sleep in peace under this audacious trophy. But would 
his ashes find a shelter sufificiently vast beneath this pedestal ? 
And his puissant statue dominating Paris, beams with sufficient 
grandeur on this place : whereas the wheels of carriages and 
the feet of passengers would profane the funereal sanctity of the 
spot in trampling on the soil so near his head." 

You must not take this description, dearest Amelia, " at the 
foot of the letter," as the French phrase it, but you will here 
have a masterly exposition of the arguments for and against the 
burial of the Emperor under the column of the Place Ven- 
dome. The idea was a fine one, granted ; but, like all other 
ideas, it was open to objections. You must not fancy that the 
cannon, or rather the cannon-balls, were in the habit of furrow- 
ing the bosoms of French braves, or any other braves, with 
cicatrices : on the contrary, it is a known fact that cannon-balls 
make wounds, and not cicatrices (which, my dear, are wounds 
partially healed) ; nay, that a man generally dies after receiving 
one such projectile on his chest, much more after having his 
bosom furrowed by a score of them. No, my love ; no bosom, 
however heroic, can stand such applications, and the author 
only means that the French soldiers faced the cannon and took 
them. Nor, my love, must you suppose that the column was 
melted : it was the cannon was melted, not the column ; but such 
phrases are often used by orators when they wish to give a par- 
ticular force and emphasis to their opinions. 

Well, again, although Napoleon might have slept in peace 
under " this audacious trophy," how could he do so and car- 
ages go rattling by all night, and people with great iron heels 
to tlieir boots pass clattering over the stones ? Nor indeed 
could it be expected that a man whose reputation stretches 
from the Pyramids to the Kremlin, should find a column of 
which the base is only five-and-twenty feet square, a shelter 
vast enough for his bones. In a word, then, although the 
proposal to bury Napoleon under the column was ingenious, 
it was found not to suit ; whereupon somebody else proposed 
the Madelaine. 

" It was proposed," says the before-quoted author with his 
usual felicity, " to consecrate the Madelaine to his exiled manes " 



558 THE SECOXD FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

— that is, to his bones when they were not in exile any longer. 
" He ought to have, it was said, a temple entire. His glory 
fills the world. His bones could not contain themselves in the 
coffin of a man — in the tomb of a king ! " In this case what 
was Mary Magdalen to do ? " This proposition, I am happy to 
say, was rejected, and a new one — that of the President of the 
Council — adopted. Napoleon and his braves ought not to quit 
each other. Under the immense gilded dome of the Invalides 
he would find a sanctuary worthy of himself. A dome imitates 
the vault of heaven, and that vault alone " (meaning of course 
the other vault) " should dominate above his head. His old 
mutilated Guard shall watch around him : the last veteran, as 
he has shed his blood in his combats, shall breathe his last sigh 
near his tomb, and all these tombs shall sleep under the tattered 
standards that have been won from all the nations of Europe." 

The original words are " sous les lambeaux cribles des dra- 
peaux cueillis chez toutes les nations ;" in English, " under the 
riddled rags of the flags that have been culled or plucked " 
(like roses or buttercups) " in all the nations." Sweet, innocent 
flowers of victory ( there they are, my dear, sure enough, and a 
pretty considerable hortiis skciis may any man examine who 
chooses to walk to the Invalides. The burial-place being thus 
agreed on, the expedition was prepared, and on the 7th July 
the " Belle Poule " frigate, in company with " La Favorite " 
corvette, quitted Toulon harbor. A couple of steamers, the 
" Tjident " and the " Ocean," escorted the ships as far as Gibral- 
tar, and there left them to pursue their voyage. 

The two ships quitted the harbor in the sight of a vast con- 
course of people, and in the midst of a great roaring of cannons. 
Previous to the departure of the " Belle Poule," the Bishop of 
Frejus went on board, and gave to the cenotaph, in which the 
Emperor's remains were to be deposited, his episcopal benedic- 
tion. Napoleon's old friends and followers, the two Bertrands, 
Gourgaud, Emanuel Las Cases, " companions in exile, or sons 
of the companions in exile of the prisoner of the infante 
Hudson," says a French writer, were passengers on board the 
frigate. Marchand, Denis, Pierret, Novaret, his old and faith- 
ful servants, were likewise in the vessel. It was commanded 
by his Royal Highness Francis Ferdinand Philip Louis Marie 
d'Orleans, Prince de Joinville, a young prince two-and-twenty 
years of age, who was already distinguished in the service of 
his country and king. 

On the 8th of October, after a voyage of six-and-sixty days, 
the " Belle Poule " arrived in James Town harbor ; and on its 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



559 



arrival, as on its departure from France, a great firing of guns 
took place. First, the " Oreste " French brig-of-war began roar- 
ing out a salutation to the frigate ; then the " Dolphin " English 
schooner gave her one-and-twenty guns ; then the frigate returned 
the compliment of the " Dolphin " schooner ; then she blazed 
out one-and-twenty guns more, as a mark of particular politeness 
to the shore — which kindness the forts acknowledged by similar 
detonations. 

These little compliments concluded on both sides. Lieutenant 
Middlemore, son and aide-de-camp of the Governor of St. 
Helena, came on board the French frigate, and brought his 
father's best respects to his Royal Highness. The Governor 
was at home ill, and forced to keep his room ; but he had 
made his house at James Town ready for Captain Joinville and 
his suite, and begged that they would make use of it during 
their stay. 

On the 9th, H. R. H. the Prince of Joinville put on his full 
uniform and landed, in company with Generals Bertrand and 
Gourgaud, Baron Las Cases, M. Marchand, M. Coquereau, the 
chaplain of the expedition, and M. de Rohan Chabot, who acted 
as chief mourner. All the garrison were under arms to receive 
the illustrious Prince and the other members of the expedition 
— who forthwith repaired to Plantation House, and had a con- 
ference with the Governor regarding their mission. 

On the loth, nth, 12th, these conferences continued: the 
crews of the French ships were permitted to come on shore and 
see the tomb of Napoleon. Bertrand, Gourgaud, Las Cases 
wandered about the island and visited the spots to which they 
had been partial in the lifetime of the Emperor. 

The 15 th October was fixed on for the day of the exhumation : 
that day five-and-twenty years, the Emperor Napoleon first set 
his foot upon the island. 

On the day previous all things had been made ready : the 
grand coffins and ornaments brought from France, and the ar- 
ticles necessary for the operation were carried to the valley of 
the Tomb. 

The operations commenced at midnight. The well-known 
friends of Napoleon before named and some other attendants of 
his, the chaplain and his acolytes, the doctor of the " Belle 
Poule," the captains of the French ships, and Captain Alexander 
of the Engineers, the English Commissioner, attended the dis- 
interment. His Royal Highness Prince de Joinville could not be 
present because the workmen were under English command. 

The men worked for nine hours incessantly, when at length 



560 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

the earth was entirely removed from the vault, all the horizontal 
strata of masonry demolished, and the large slab which covered 
the place where the stone sarcophagus lay, removed by a crane. 
This outer coffin of stone was perfect, and could scarcely be 
said to be damp. 

" As soon as the Abbe Coquereau had recited the prayers, 
the coffin was removed with the greatest care, and carried by 
the engineer-soldiers, bareheaded, into a tent that had been 
prepared for the purpose. After the religious ceremonies, the 
inner coffins were opened. The outermost coffin was slightly 
injured : then came one of lead, which was in good condition, 
and enclosed two others — one of tin and one of wood. The 
last coffin was lined inside with white satin, which having become 
detached by the effect of time, had fallen upon the body and 
enveloped it like a winding-sheet, and had become slightly 
attached to it. 

" It is difficult to describe with what anxiety and emotion 
those who were present waited for the moment which was to 
expose to them all that death had left of Napoleon. Notwitli- 
standing the singular state of preservation of the tomb and 
coffins, we could scarcely hope to find anything but some 
misshapen remains of the least perishable part of the costume 
to evidence the identity of the body. But when Doctor Guillard 
raised the sheet of satin, an indescribable feeling of surprise 
and affection was expressed by the spectators, many of whom 
burst into tears. The Emperor was himself before their eyes 1 
The features of the face, though changed, were perfectly recog- 
nized ; the hands extremely beautiful ; his well-known costume 
had suffered but little, and the colors were easily distinguished. 
The attitude itself was full of ease, and but for the fragments 
of the satin lining which covered, as with a fine gauze, several 
parts of the uniform, we might have believed we still saw 
Napoleon before us lying on his bed of state. General Bertrand 
and M. Marchand, who were both present at the interment 
quickly pointed out the different articles which each had de- 
posited in the coffin, and remained in the precise position in 
which they had previously described them to be. 

" The two inner coffins were carefully closed again ; the old 
leaden coffin was strongly blocked up with wedges of wood, and 
both were once more soldered up with the most minute precau- 
tions, under the direction of Dr. Guillard. These different op- 
erations being terminated, the ebony sarcophagus was closed 
as well as its oak case. On delivering the key of the ebony 
sarcophagus to Count de Chabot, the King's Commissioner, 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 561 

Captain Alexander declared to him, in the name of the Governor, 
that this coffin, containing the mortal remains of the Emperor 
Napoleon, was considered as at the disposal of the French 
Government from that day, and from the moment at which it 
should arrive at the place of embarkation, towards which it 
was about to be sent under the orders of General Middlemore. 
The King's Commissioner replied that he was charged by his 
Government, and in its name, to accept the coffin from the 
hands of the British authorities, and that he and the other 
persons composing the French mission were ready to follow it 
to James Town, where the Prince de Joinville, superior comman- 
dant of the expedition, would be ready to receive it and conduct 
it on board his frigate. A car drawn by four horses, decked 
with funereal emblems, had been prepared before the arrival of 
the expedition, to receive the coffin, as well as a pall, and all 
the other suitable trappings of mourning. When the sarcoph- 
agus was placed on the car, the whole was covered with a 
magnificent imperial mantle brought from Paris, the four corners 
of which were borne by Generals Bertrand and Gourgaud, Baron 
Las Cases and M. Marchand. At half-past three o'clock the 
funeral car began to move, preceded by a chorister bearing the 
cross, and the Abbe Coquereau. M. de Chabot acted as chief 
mourner. All the authorities of the island, all the principal 
inhabitants, and the whole of the garrison, followed in proces- 
sion from the tomb to the quay. But with the exception of the 
artillerymen necessary to lead the horses,and occasionally support 
the car when descending some steep parts of the way, the places 
nearest the coffin were reserved for the French mission. Gen- 
eral Middlemore, although in a weak state of health, persisted 
in following the whole way on foot, together with General 
Churchill, chief of the staff in India, who had arrived only two 
days before from Bombay. The immense weight of the coffins, 
and the unevenness of the road, rendered the utmost carefulness 
necessary throughout the whole distance. Colonel Trelawney 
commanded in person the small detachment of artillerymen who 
conducted the car, and, thanks to his great care, not the slightest 
accident took place From the moment of the departure to the 
arrival at the quay, the cannons of the forts and the ' Belle Poule ' 
fired minute-guns. After an hour's march the rain ceased for 
the first time since the commencement of the operations, and on 
arriving in sight of the town we found a brilliant sky and beau- 
tiful weather. Fronj the morning the three French vessels of 
war had assumed the usual signs of deep mourning : their yards 
crossed and their flags lowered. Two French merchantmen. 

36 



562 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON, 

' Bonne Amie ' and ' Indien,' which had been in the roads for two 
days, had put themselves under the Prince's orders, and followed 
during the ceremony all the manoeuvres of the ' Belle Poule.' 
The forts of the town, and the houses of the consuls, had also 
their flags half-mast high. 

" On arriving at the entrance of the town, the troops of the 
garrison and the militia formed in two lines as far as the extrem- 
ity of the quay. According to the order for mourning pre- 
scribed for the English army, the men had their arms reversed 
and the officers had crape on their arms, with their swords re- 
versed. All the inhabitants had been kept away from the line of 
march, but they lined the terraces commanding the town, and the 
streets were occupied only by the troops, the 91st Regiment being 
on the right and the militia on the left. The cortege advanced 
slowly between two ranks of soldiers to the sound of a funeral 
march, while the cannons of the forts were fired, as well as 
those of the ' Belle Poule ' and the ' Dolphin ; ' the echoes being 
repeated a thousand times by the rocks above James Town. 
After two hours' march the cortege stopped at the end of the 
quay, where the Prince de Joinville had stationed himself at the 
head of the officers of the three French ships of war. The 
greatest official honors had been rendered by the English 
authorities to the memory of the Emperor — the most striking 
testimonials of respect had marked the adieu given by St. 
Helena to his cofBn ; and from this moment the mortal remains 
of the Emperor were about to belong to France. When the 
funeral-car stopped, the Prince de Joinville advanced alone, and 
in presence of all around, who stood with their heads uncovered, 
received, in a solemn manner, the imperial coffin from the hands 
of General Middlemore. His Royal Highness then thanked 
the Governor, in the name of France, for all the testimonials of 
sympathy and respect with which the authorities and inhabitants 
of St. Helena had surrounded the memorable ceremonial. A 
cutter had been expressly prepared to receive the coffin. During 
the embarkation, which the Prince directed himself, the bands 
played funeral airs, and all the boats were stationed round with 
their oars shipped. The moment the sarcophagus touched the 
cutter, a magnificent royal fiag, which the ladies of James Town 
had embroidered for the occasion, was unfurled, and the ' Belle 
Poule' immediately squared her masts and unfurled her colors. 
All the manoeuvres of the frigate were immediately followed by 
the other vessels. Our mourning had ceased with the exile of 
Napoleon, and the French naval division dressed itself out in 
all its festal ornaments to receive the imperial coffin under the 
French fiag. The sarcophagus was covered in the cutter with 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 563 

the imperial mantle. The Prince de Joinville placed himself ta 
the rudder, Commandant Guyet at the head of the boat ; Gen- 
erals Bertrand and Gourgaud, Baron Las Cases, M. Marchand, 
and the Abbe Coquereau occupied the same places as during 
the march. Count Chabot and Commandant Hernoux were 
astern, a little in advance of the Prince. As soon as the cutter 
had pushed off from the quay, the batteries ashore fired a salute 
of twenty-one guns, and our ships returned the salute with all 
their artillery. Two other salutes were fired during the passage 
from the quay to the frigate ; the cutter advancing very slowly, 
and surrounded by the other boats. At half-past six o'clock 
it reached the ' Belle Poule,' all the men being on the yards 
with their hats in their hands. The Prince had had arranged 
on the deck a chapel, decked with flags and trophies of arms, 
the altar being placed on the foot of the mizenmast. The 
coffin, carried by our sailors, passed between two ranks of officers 
with drawn swords, and was placed on the quarter-deck. The 
absolution was pronounced by the Abbe Coquereau the same 
evening. Next day, at ten o'clock, a solemn mass was celebrated 
on the deck, m presence of the officers and part of the crews of 
the ships. His Royal Highness stood at the foot of the coffin. 
The cannon of the ' Favorite ' and ' Oreste ' fired minute-guns 
during this ceremony, which terminated by a solemn absolution ; 
and the Prince de Joinville, the gentlemen of the mission, the 
officers, and the premiers maitres of the ship, sprinkled holy water 
on the coffin. At eleven, all the ceremonies of the church were 
accomplished, all tie honors done to a sovereign had been paid 
to the mortal remains of Napoleon. The coffin was carefully 
lowered between decks, and placed in the chapelle ardente which 
had been prepared at Toulon for its reception. At this moment, 
the vessels fired a last salute with all their artillery, and the 
frigate took in her flags, keeping up only her flag at the stern 
and the royal standard at the maintopgallant-mast. On Sunday, 
the i8th, at eight in the morning, the 'Belle Poule' quitted St. 
Helena with her precious deposit on board. 

" During the whole time that the mission remained at James 
Town, the best understanding never ceased to exist between 
the population of the island and the French. The Prince de 
Joinville and his companions met in all quarters and at all times 
with the greatest good-will and the warmest testimonials ot 
sympathy. The authorities and the inhabitants must have felt, 
no doubt, great regret at seeing taken away from their island 
the coffin that had rendered it so celebrated ; but they repressed 
their feelings with a courtesy that does honor to the frankness 
of their character." 



564 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

11. 
ON THE VOYAGE FROM ST. HELENA TO PARIS. 

On the i8th October the French frigate quitted the island 
with its precious burden on board. 

His Royal Highness the Captain acknowledged cordially the 
kindness and attention which he and his crew had received from 
the English authorities and the inhabitants of the Island of St. 
Helena ; nay, promised a pension to an old soldier who had been 
for many years the guardian of the imperial tomb, and went so far 
as to take into consideration the petition of a certain lodging- 
house keeper, who prayed for a compensation for the loss which 
the removal of the Emperor's body would occasion to her. And 
although it was not to be expected that the great French nation 
should forego its natural desire of recovering the remains of a 
hero so dear to it for the sake of the individual interest of the 
landlady in question, it must have been satisfactory to her to 
find that the peculiarity of her position was so delicately appreci- 
ated by the august Prince who commanded the expedition, and 
carried away with him animce dimiditnn sua — the half of the 
genteel independence which she derived from the situation of 
her hotel. In a word, politeness and friendship could not be 
carried farther. The Prince's realm and the landlady's were 
bound together by the closest ties of amity. M. Thiers was 
Minister of France, the great patron of the English alliance. 
At London M. Guizot was the worthy representative of the 
French good-will towards the British people : and the remark 
frequently made by our orators at public dinners, that " France 
and England, while united, might defy the world," was con- 
sidered as likely to hold good for many years to come, — the 
union that is. As for defying the world, that was neither here 
nor there ; nor did English politicians ever dream of doing any 
such thing, except perhaps at the tenth glass of port at " Free- 
mason's Tavern." 

Little, however, did Mrs. Corbett, the Saint Helena landlady, 
little did his Royal Highness Prince Ferdinand Philip Marie de 
Joinville know what was going on in Europe all this time (when 
I say in Europe, I mean in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt) ; how 
clouds, in fact, were gathering upon what you call the political 
horizon ; and how tempests were rising that were to blow to 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 565 

pieces our Anglo-Gallic temple of friendship. Oh, but it is sad 
to think that a single wicked old Turk should be the means of 
setting our two Christian nations by the ears ! 

Yes, my love, this disreputable old man had been for some 
time past the object of the disinterested attention of the great 
sovereigns of Europe. The Emperor Nicholas (a moral charac- 
ter, though following the Greek superstition, and adored for 
his mildness and benevolence of disposition), the Emperor Fer- 
dinand, the King of Prussia, and our own gracious Queen, had 
taken such just offence at his conduct and disobedience tow- 
ards a young and interesting sovereign, whose authority he had 
disregarded, whose fleet he had kidnapped, whose fair provinces 
he had pounced upon, that they determined to come to the aid 
of Abdul Medjid the First, Emperor of the Turks, and bring his 
rebellious vassal to reason. In this project the French nation 
was invited to join ; but they refused the invitation, saying, that 
it was necessary for the maintenance of the balance of power 
in Europe that his Highness Mehemet Ali should keep posses- 
sion of what by hook or by crook he had gotten, and that they 
would have no hand in injuring him. But why continue this 
argument, which you have read in the newspapers for many 
months past ? You, my dear, must know as well as I, that the 
balance of Power in Europe could not possibly be maintained 
in any such way ; and though, to be sure, for the last fifteen 
years, the progress of the old robber has not made much dif- 
ference to us in the neighborhood of Russell Square, and the 
battle of Nezib did not jn the least affect our taxes, our homes, 
our institutions, or the price of butcher's meat, yet there is no 
knowing what might have happened had Mehemet Ali been 
allowed to remain quietly as he was : and the balance of power 
in Europe might have been — the deuce knows where. 

Here, then, in a nutshell, you have the whole matter in dis- 
pute. While Mrs. Corbett and the Prince de Joinville were in- 
nocently interchanging compliments at Saint Helena, — bang ! 
bang ! Commodore Napier was pouring broadsides into Tyre 
and Sidon ; our gallant navy was storming breaches and rout- 
ing armies ; Colonel Hodges had seized upon the green stand- 
ard of Ibrahim Pacha ; and the powder-magazine of St. John 
of Acre was blown up sky-high, with eighteen hundred Egyptian 
soldiers in company with it. The French said that Tor Anglais 
had achieved all these successes, and no doubt believed that 
the poor fellows at Acre were bribed to a man. 

It must have been particularly unpleasant to a high-minded 
nation like the French — at the very moment when the Egyptian 



566 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. . 

affair and the balance of Europe had been settled in this abrupt 
way — to find out all of a sudden that the Pasha of Egypt was 
their dearest friend and ally. They had suffered in the person 
of their friend ; and though, seeing that the dispute was ended, 
and the territory out of his hand, they could not hope to get it 
back for him, or to aid him in any substantial way, yet Monsieur 
Thiers determined, just as a mark of politeness to the Pasha, to 
fight all Europe for maltreating him, — all Europe, England in- 
cluded. He was bent on war, and an immense majority of 
the nation went with him. He called for a million of soldiers, 
and would have had them too, had not the King been against 
the project and delayed the completion of it at least for a time. 

Of these great European disputes Captain Joinville received 
a notification while he was at sea on board his frigate ; as we 
find by the official account which has been published of his 
mission. 

" Some days after quitting Saint Helena," says that docu- 
ment, " the expedition fell in with a ship coming from Europe, 
and was thus made acquainted with the warlike rumors then 
afloat, by which a collision with the English marine was ren- 
dered possible. The Prince de Joinville immediately assembled 
the officers of the ' Belle Poule,' to deliberate on an event so 
unexpected and important. 

" The council of war having expressed its opinion that it 
was necessary at all events to prepare for an energetic defence, 
preparations were made to place in battery all the guns that the 
frigate could bring to bear against the enemy. The provisional, 
cabins that had been fitted up in the battery were demolished, 
the partitions removed, and, with all the elegant furniture of the 
cabins, flung into the sea. The Prince de Joinville was the first 
'to execute himself,' and the frigate soon found itself armed 
with six or eight more guns. 

" That part of the ship where these cabins had previously 
been, went by the name of Lacedaemon ; everything luxurious 
being banished to make way for what was useful. 

" Indeed, all persons who were on board agree in saying that 
Monseigneur the Prince de Joinville most worthily acquitted 
himself of the great and honorable mission which had been 
confided to him. All affirm not only that the commandant of 
the expedition did everything at St. Helena which as a French- 
man he was bound to do in order that the remains of the Em- 
peror should receive all the honors due to them, but moreover 
that he accomplished his mission with all the measured solemn- 
ity, all the pious and severe dignity, that the son of the Emperor 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 567 

himself would have shown upon a like occasion. The comman- 
dant had also comprehended that the remains of the Emperor 
must never fall into the hands of the stranger, and being him- 
self decided rather to sink his ship than to give up his precious 
deposit, he had inspired every one about him with the same 
energetic resolution that he had himself taken ' against an extreme 
eventnality' " 

Monseigneur, my dear, is really one of the finest young 
fellows it is possible to see. A tall, broad-chested, slim-waisted, 
brown-faced, dark-eyed young prince, with a great beard (and 
other martial qualities no doubt) beyond his years. As he strode 
into the Chapel of the Invalides on Tuesday at the head of his 
men, he made no small impression, I can tell you, upon the ladies 
assembled to witness the ceremony. Nor are the crew of the 
"Belle Poule" less agreeable to look at than their commander. 
A more clean, smart, active, well-limbed set of lads never " did 
dance" upon the deck of the famed " Belle Poule" in the days 
of her memorable combat with the " Saucy Arethusa." " These 
five hundred sailors," says a French newspaper, speaking of 
them in the proper French way, " sword in hand, in the severe 
costume of board-ship {la senere tenue du bord), seemed proud 
of the mission that they had just accomplished. Their blue 
jackets, their red cravats, the turned-down collars of blue shirts 
edged with white, above all their resolute appearance and mar- 
tial air, gave a favorable specimen of the present state of our 
marine — a marine of which so much might be expected and 
from which so little has been required." — Le Commerce: i6th 
December. 

There they were, sure enough ; a cutlass upon one hip, a 
pistol on the other — a gallant set of young men indeed." I 
doubt, to be sure, whether ihe severe tenue du ^^-^/v/ requires that 
the seaman should be always furnished with these ferocious 
weapons, which in sundry maritime manoeuvres, such as going 
to sleep in your hammock for instance, or twinkling a binnacle, 
or luffing a marlinspike, or keelhauling a maintopgallant (all 
naval operations, my dear, which any seafaring novelist will 
explain to you) — I doubt, I say, whether these weapons are 
always worn by sailors, and have heard that they are commonly, 
and very sensibly too, locked up until they are wanted. Take 
another example : suppose artillerymen were incessantly com- 
pelled to walk about with a pyramid of twenty-four-pound shot in 
one pocket, a lighted fuse and a few barrels of gunpowder in 
the other — these objects would, as you may imagine, greatly 
inconvenience the artilleryman in his peaceful state. 



^68 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

The newspaper writer is therefore most likely mistaken in 
saying that the seamen were in the severe tenice dii bord, or by 
" bo?'d" meaning " abordage'' — which operation they were not, in 
a harmless church, hung round with velvet and wax-candles, and 
filled with ladies, surely called upon to perform. Nor indeed 
can it be reasonably supposed that the picked men of the crack 
frigate of the French navy are a " good specimen " of the rest 
of the French marine, any more than a cuirassed colossus at the 
gate of the Horse Guards can be considered a fair sample of 
the British soldier of the line. The sword and pistol, however, 
had no doubt their effect — the former was in its sheath, the 
latter not loaded, and I hear that the French ladies are quite in 
raptures with these charming loiips-de-mer. 

Let the warlike accoutrements then pass. It was necessary, 
perhaps, to strike the Parisians with awe, and therefore the 
crew was armed in this fierce fashion ; but why should the 
Captain begin to swagger as well as his men ? and why did the 
Prince de Joinville lug out sword and pistol so early ? or why 
if he thought fit to make preparations, should the official jour- 
nals brag of them afterwards as proofs of his extraordinary 
courage ? 

Here is the case. The English Government makes him a 
present of the bones of Napoleon : English workmen work for 
nine hours without ceasing, and dig the coffin out of the ground : 
the English Commissioner hands over the key of the box to the 
French representative. Monsieur Chabot ; English horses carry 
the funeral-car down to the sea-shore, accompanied by the 
English Governor, who has actually left his bed to walk in the 
procession and to do the French nation honor. 

.After receiving and acknowledging these politenesses, the 
French captain takes his charge on board, and the first thing we 
afterwards hear of him is the determination " qit^il a sufaire 
passer " into all his crew, to sink rather than yield up the body 
of the Emperor mix mams de letranger — into the hands of the 
foreigner. My dear Monseigneur, is not this par trop fort ! 
Suppose " the foreigner " had wanted the coffin, could he not 
have kept it ? Why show this uncalled-for valor, this extraor- 
dinary alacrity at sinking ? Sink or blow yourself up as much 
as you please, but your Royal Highness must see that the 
genteel thing would have been to wait until you were asked to 
do so, before you offended good-natured, honest people, who — 
heaven help them ! — have never shown themselves at all mur- 
derously inclined towards you. A man knocks up his cabins 
forsooth, throws his tables and chairs overboard, runs guns into 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 569 

the portholes, and calls le qtiartier dii bord oil existaient ces chatn- 
bres, Lacedcernon. Lacedaemon ! There is a province, O Prince, 
in your royal father's dominions, a fruitful parent of heroes in 
its time, which would have given a much better nickname to 
your quartier du bord : you should have called it Gascony, 

" Sooner than strike we'll all ex-pi-er 
On board of the Bell-e Pou-le." 

Such fanfaronnading is very well on the part of Tom Dibden, 
but a person of your Royal Highness's "pious and severe dig- 
nity " should have been above it. If you entertained an idea 
that war was imminent, would it not have been far better to 
have made your preparations in quiet, and when you found the 
war-rumor blown over, to have said nothing about what you 
intended to do ? Fie upon such cheap Lacedsemonianism ! 
There is no poltroon in the world but can brag about what he 
would have done : however, to do your Royal Highness's nation 
justice, they brag and fight too. 

This narrative, my dear Miss Smith, as you will have re- 
marked, is not a simple tale merely, but is accompanied by 
many moral and pithy remarks which form its chief value, in 
the writer's eyes at least, and the above account of the sham 
Lacedaemon on board the "Belle Poule " has a double-barrelled 
morality, as I conceive. Besides justly reprehending the 
French propensity towards braggadocio, it proves very strongly 
a point on which I am the only statesman in Europe who has 
strongly insisted. In the "Paris Sketch Book" it was stated 
that i/ie French hate us. They hate us, my dear, profoundly 
and desperately, and there never was such a hollow humbug 
in the world as the French alliance. Men get a character for 
patriotism in France merely by hating England. Directly they 
go into strong opposition (where, you know, people are always 
more patriotic than on the ministerial side), they appeal to the 
people, and have their hold on the people by hating England 
in common with them. Why ? It is a long story, and the 
hatred may be accounted for by many reasons, both political 
and social. Any time these eight hundred years this ill-will 
has been going on, and has been transmitted on the French 
side from father to son. On the French side, not on ours : we 
have had no, or few, defeats to complain of, no invasions to 
make us angry ; but you see that to discuss such a period of 
time would demand a considerable number of pages, and for 
the present we will avoid the examination of the question. 

But they hate us, that is the long and short of it ; and you 



57° 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



see how this hatred has exploded just now, not upon a serious 
cause of difference, but upon an argument : for what is the 
Pasha of Egypt to us or them but a mere abstract opinion ? 
For the same reason the Little-endians in Lilliput abhorred 
the Big-endians ; and I beg you to remark how his Royal High- 
ness Prince Ferdinand Mary, upon hearing that this argument 
was in the course of debate between us, straight way flung his 
furniture overboard and expressed a preference for sinking his 
ship rather than yielding it to the etranger. Nothing came of 
this wish of his, to be sure ; but the intention is everything. 
Unlucky circumstances denied him the power, but he had the 
will. 

Well, beyond this disappointment, the Prince de Joinville 
had nothing to complain of during the voyage, which terminated 
happily by the arrival of the " Belle Poule " at Cherbourg, on 
the 30th of November, at five o'clock in the morning. A tele- 
graph made the glad news known at Paris, where the Minister 
of the Interior, Tannegny-Duchatel (you will read the name, 
Madam, in the old Anglo-French wars), had already made 
" immense preparations " for receiving the body of Napoleon. 

The entry was fixed for the 15 th of December. 

On the Sth of December at Cherbourg the body was trans- 
ferred from the " Belle Poule " frigate to the " Normandie " 
steamer. On which occasion the mayor of Cherbourg depos- 
ited, in the name of his town, a gold laurel branch upon the 
coffin — which was saluted by the forts and dikes of the place 
with ONE THOUSAND GUNS ! There was a treat for the inhab- 
itants. 

There was on board the steamer a splendid receptacle for 
the coffin : " a temple with twelve pillars and a dome to cover 
it from the wet and moisture, surrounded with velvet hangings 
and silver fringes. At the head was a gold cross, at the foot 
a gold lamp : other lamps were kept constantly burning within, 
and vases of burning incense were hung around. An altar, 
hung with velvet and silver, was at the mizen-mast of the vessel, 
and four silver eagles at each comer of the altar y It was a compli- 
ment at once to Napoleon and — excuse me for saying so, but 
so the facts are — to Napoleon and to God Almighty. 

Three steamers, the " Normandie," the " Veloce," and the 
" Courrier," formed the expedition from Cherbourg to Havre, 
at which place they arrived on the evening of the 9th of De- 
cember, and where the " Veloce " was replaced by the Seine 
steamer, having in tow one of the state-coasters, which was to fire 
the salute at the moment when the body was transferred into 
one of the vessels belonging to the Seine. 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



57^ 



The expedition passed Havre the same night, and came to 
anchor at Val de la Haye on the Seine, three leagues below 
Rouen. 

Here the next morning (loth), it was met by the flotilla of 
steamboats of the Upper Seine, consisting, of the three 
" Dorades," the three " Etoiles," the " Efbeuvien," the " Pa- 
risien," the " Parisienne," and the "Zampa." The Prince de 
Joinville, and the persons of the expedition, embarked imrae- , 
diately in the flotilla, which arrived the same day at Rouen. 

At Rouen salutes were fired, the National Guard on both 
sides of the river paid military honors to the body : and over 
the middle of the suspension-bridge a magnificent cenotaph 
was erected, decorated with flags, fasces, violet hangings, and 
the imperial arms. Before the cenotaph the expedition stopped, 
and the absolution was given by the archbishop and the clergy. 
After a cou]5le of hours' stay, the expedition proceeded to Pont 
de I'Arche. On the nth it reached Vernon, on the 12th 
Mantes, on the 13th Maisons-sur-Seine. 

" Everywhere," says the ofiicial account from which the 
above particulars are borrowed, " the authorities, the National 
Guard, and the people flocked to the passage of the flotilla, 
desirous to render the honors due to his glory, which is the 
glory of France. In seeing its hero return, the nation seemed 
to have found its Palladium again, — the sainted relics of vic- 
tory." 

At length, on the 14th, the coffin was transferred from the 
" Dorade " steamer on board the imperial vessel arrived from 
Paris. In the evening, the imperial vessel arrived at Courbe- 
voie, which was the last stage of the journey. 

Here it was that M. Guizotwent to examine the vessel, and 
was very nearly flung into the Seine, as report goes, by the 
patriots assembled there. It is now lying on the river, near 
the Invalides, amidst the drifting ice, whither the people of 
Paris are flocking out to see it. 

The vessel is of a very elegant antique form, and I can give 
you on the Thames no better idea of it than by requesting you 
to fancy an immense wherry, of which the stern has been cut 
straight off, and on which a temple on steps has been elevated. 
At the figure-head is an immense gold eagle, and at the stern 
is a little terrace, filled with evergreens and a profusion ot 
banners. Upon pedestals along the sides of the vessel are 
tripods in which incense was burned, and underneath them are 
garlands of flowers called here " immortals." Four eagles 
surround the temple, and a great scroll or garland held in their 



572 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



beaks, surrounds it. It is hung with velvet and gold ; four gold 
caryatides support the entry of it ; and in the midst, upon a 
large platform hung with velvet, and bearing the imperial arms, 
stood the coffin. A steamboat, carrying two hundred musicians 
playing funeral marches and military symphonies, preceded this 
magnificent vessel to Courbevoie, where a funeral temple was 
erected, and " a statue of Notre Dame de Grace, before which 
the seamen of the ' Belle Poule ' inclined themselves, in order 
"to thank her for having granted them a noble and glorious 
voyage." 

Early on the morning of the 15th December, amidst clouds 
of incense, and thunder of cannon, and innumerable shouts of 
people, the coffin was transferred from the barge, and carried 
by the seamen of the " Belle Poule " to the Imperial Car. 

And now having conducted our hero almost to 4he gates of 
Paris, I must tell you what preparations were made in the 
capital to receive him. 

Ten days before the arrival of the body, as you walked across 
the Deputies' Bridge, or over the Esplanade of the Invalides, 
you saw on the bridge eight, on the esplanade thirty-two, mys- 
terious boxes erected, wherein a couple of score of sculptors were 
at work night and day. 

In the middle of the Invalid Avenue, there used to stand, 
on a kind of shabby fountain or pump, a bust of Lafayette, 
crowned with some dirty wreaths of " immortals," and looking 
down at the little streamlet which occasionally dribbled below 
him. The spot of ground was now clear, and Lafayette and 
the pump had been consigned to some cellar, to make way for 
the mighty procession that was to pass over the place of their 
habitation. 

Strange coincidence ! If I had been M. Victor Hugo, my 
dear, or a poet of any note, I would, in a few hours, have made 
an impromptu concerning that Lafayette-crowned pump, and 
compared its lot now to the fortune of its patron some fifty 
years back. From him then issued, as from his fountain now, 
a feeble dribble of pure words ) then, as now, some faint circle 
of disciples were willing to admire him. Certainly in the midst 
of the war and storm without, this pure fount of eloquence 
went dribbling, dribbling on, till of a sudden the revolutionary 
workmen knocked down statue and fountain, and the gorgeous 
imperial cavalcade trampled over the spot where they stood. 

As for the Champs Elysees, there was no end to the prepara- 
tions : the first day you saw a couole of hundred scaffoldings 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 573 

erected at intervals between the handsome gilded gas-lamps that 
at present ornament that avenue ; next day, all these scaffold- 
ings were filled with brick and mortar. Presently, over the 
bricks and mortar rose pediments of statues, legs of urns, legs 
of goddesses, legs and bodies of goddesses, legs, bodies, and 
busts of goddesses. Finally, on the 13th December, goddesses 
complete. On the 14th, they were painted marble-color : and the 
basements of wood and canvas on which they stood were made 
to resemble the same costly material. The funeral urns were 
ready to receive the frankincense and precious odors which 
were to burn in them. A vast number of white columns 
stretched down the avenue, each bearing a bronze buckler on 
which was written, in gold letters, one of the victories of the 
Emperor, and each decorated with enormous imperial flags. 
On these columns golden eagles were placed ; and the news- 
papers did oot fail to remark the ingenious position in which 
the royal birds had been set : for while those 'on the right-hand 
side of the way had their heads turned towards the procession, 
as if to watch its coming, those on the left were looking exactly 
the other way, as if to regard its progress. Do not fancy I am 
joking : this point was gravely and emphatically urged in many 
newspapers ; and I do believe no mortal Frenchman ever 
thought it anything but sublime. 

Do not interrupt me, sweet Miss Smith. I feel that you are 
angry. I can see from here the pouting of your lips, and know 
what you are going to say. You are going to say, " I will read 
no more of this Mr. Titmarsh ; there is no subject, however 
solemn, but he treats it with flippant irreverence, and no char- 
acter, however great, at whom he does not sneer." 

Ah, my dear ! you are young now and enthusiastic ; and your 
Titmarsh is old, very old, sad, and gray-headed. I have seen 
a poor mother buy a halfpenny wreath at the gate of Mont- 
martre burying-ground, and go with it to her little child's grave, 
and hang it there over the little humble stone ; and if ever you 
saw me scorn the mean offering of the poor shabby creature, I 
will give you leave to be as angry as you will. They say that on 
the passage of Napoleon's coffin down the Seine, old soldiers and 
country people walked miles from their villages just to catch 
a sight of the boat which carried his body, and to kneel down on 
the shore and pray for him. God forbid that we should quarrel 
with such prayers and sorrow, or question their sincerity. 
Something great and good must have been in this man, some- 
thing loving and kindly, that has kept his name so cherished 
in the popular memory, and gained him such lasting reverence 
and affection. 



574 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 



But, Madam, one may respect the dead without feeling awe- 
stricken at the plumes of the hearse ; and I see no reason why 
one should sympathize with the train of mutes and undertakers, 
however deep may be their mourning. Look, I pray you, at the 
manner in which the French nation has performed Napoleon's 
funeral. Time out of mind, nations have raised, in memory of 
their heroes, august mausoleums, grand pyramids, splendid 
statues of gold or marble, sacrificing whatever they had that was 
most costly and rare, or that was most beautiful in art, as tokens 
of their respect and love for the dead person. What a fine 
example of this sort of sacrifice is that (recorded in a book of 
which Simplicity is the great characteristic) of the poor woman 
who brought her pot of precious ointment — her all, and laid it 
at the feet of the Object which, upon earth, she most loved and 
respected. " Economists and calculators " there were even in 
those days who quarrelled with the manner in which the poor 
woman lavished so much " capital ; " but you will remember how 
nobly and generously the sacrifice was appreciated, and how 
the economists were put to shame. 

With regard to the funeral ceremony that has just been per- 
formed here, it is said that a famous public personage and 
statesman. Monsieur Thiers indeed, spoke with the bitterest 
indignation of the general style of the preparations, and of their 
mean and tawdry character. He would have had a pomp as 
magnificent, he said, as that of Rome at the triumph of Aurelian : 
he would have decorated the bridges and avenues through which 
the procession was to pass, with the costliest marbles and the 
finest works of art, and have had them to remain there forever 
as monuments of the great funeral. 

The economists and calculators might here interpose with a 
great deal of reason ] for, indeed, there was no reason why a 
nation should impoverish itself to do honor to the memory 
of an individual for whom, after all, it can feel but a qualified 
enthusiasm : but it surely might have employed the large sum 
voted for the purpose more wisely and generously, and recorded 
its respect for Napoleon by some worthy and lasting memorial, 
rather than have erected yonder thousand vain heaps of tinsel, 
paint, and plaster, that are already cracking and crumbling in 
the frost, at three days old. 

Scarcely one of the statues, indeed, deserves to last a 
month : some are odious distortions and caricatures, which never 
should have been allowed to stand for a moment. On the very 
day of the fete, the wind was shaking the canvas pedestals, 
and the flimsy wood-work had begun to gape and give way. 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



575 



At a little distance, to be sure, you could not see the cracks ; 
and pedestals and statues lookedX'iS?.^ marble. At some distance, 
you could not tell but that the wreaths and eagles were gold 
embroidery, and not gilt paper — the great tricolor flags damask, 
and not striped calico. One would think that these sham 
splendors betokened sham respect, if one had not known that the 
name of Napoleon is held in real reverence, and observed some- 
what of the character of the nation. Real feelings they have, but 
they distort them by exaggeration ; real courage, which they 
render ludicrous by intolerable braggadocio ; and I think the 
above official account of the Prince de Joinville's proceedings, 
of the manner in which the Emperor's remains have been treated 
in their voyage to the capital, and of the preparations made to 
receive him in it, will give my dear Miss Smith some means 
of understanding the social and moral condition of this worthy 
people of France. 



III. 

ON THE FUNERAL CEREMONY. 

Shall I tell you, my dear, that when Francois woke me at 
a very early hour on this eventful morning, while the keen stars 
were still glittering overhead, a half-moon, as sharp as a razor, 
beaming in the frosty sky, and a wicked north wind blowing, 
that blew the blood out of one's fingers and froze your leg as 
you put it out of bed ; — shall I tell you, my dear, that when 
Francois called me, and said, " Via vot' cafe. Monsieur Tite- 
masse, buvez-le, tiens, il est tout chaud," I felt myself, after 
imbibing the hot breakfast, so comfortable under three blankets 
and a mackintosh, that for at least quarter of an hour no man 
in Europe could say whether Titmarsh would or would not be 
present at the burial of the Emperor Napoleon. 

Besides, my dear, the cold, there was another reason for 
doubting. Did the French nation, or did they not, intend to 
offer up some of us English over the imperial grave ? And 
were the games to be concluded by a massacre ? It was said 
in the newspapers that Lord Granville had despatched circulars 
to all the English resident in Paris, begging them to kept their 
homes. The French journals announced this news, and warned 



576 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

US charitably of the fate intended for us. Had Lord Granville 
written ? Certainly not to me. Or had he written to all except 
VIC ? And was I the victim — the doomed one ? — to be seized 
directly I showed my face in the Champs Elysees, and torn in 
pieces by French Patriotism to the frantic chorus of the 
" Marseillaise?" Depend on it, Madam, that high and low in 
this city on Tuesday were not altogether at their ease, and that 
the bravest felt no small tremor ! And be sure of this, that as 
his Majesty Louis Philippe took his nightcap off his royal head 
that morning, he prayed heartily that he might, at night, put it 
on in safety. 

Well, as my companion and I came out of doors, being 
bound for the Church of the Invalides, for which a Deputy had 
kindly furnished us with tickets, we saw the very prettiest sight 
of the whole day, and I can't refrain from mentioning it to my 
dear, tender-hearted Miss Smith. 

In the same house where I live (but about five stories nearer 
the ground), lodges an English family, consisting of — i. A 
great-grandmother, a hale, handsome old lady of seventy, the 
very best-dressed and neatest old lady in Paris. 2. A grand- 
father and grandmother, tolerably young to bear that title. 3. 
A daughter. And 4. Two little great-grand, or grand-children, 
that may be of the age of three and one, and belong to a son 
and daughter who are in India. The grandfather, who is as 
proud of his wife as he was thirty years ago when he married, 
and pays her compliments still twice or thrice in a day, and 
when he leads her into a room looks round at the persons as- 
sembled, and says in his heart, " Here, gentlemen, here is 
my wife — show me such another woman in England," — this 
gentleman had hired a room on the Champs Elyse'es, for he 
would not have his wife catch cold by exposing her to the 
balconies in the open air. 

When I came to the street, I found the family assembled in 
the following order of march : — ■ 

No. I, the great-grandmother walking daintily along, supported by No. 3, 

her granddaughter. 
— — A nurse carrying No. 4 junior, who was sound asleep, and a huge basket 
containing saucepans, bottles of milk, parcels of infants' food, certain 
dimity napkins, a child's coral, and a little horse belonging to No 4 
senior. 

A servant bearing a basket of condiments. 

No. 2, grandfather, spick and span, clean shaved, hat brushed, white buck- 

skin gloves, bamboo cane, brown great-coat, walking as upright and 
solemn as may be, having his lady on his arm. 

■ No. 4, senior, with mottled legs and a tartan costume, who was frisking 

about between his grandpapa's legs, who heartily wished him at home. 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 577 

" My dear," his face seemed to say to his lady, " I think 
you might have left the little things in the nursery, for we 
shall have to squeeze through a terrible crowd in the Champs 
Elyse'es." 

The lady was going out for a day's pleasure, and her face 
was full of care • she had to look first after her old mother 
who was walking ahead, then after No. 4 junior with the nurse 
— he might fall into all sorts of danger, wake up, cry, catch 
cold ; nurse might slip down, or heaven knows what. Then 
she had to look her husband in the face, who had gone to such 
expense and been so kind for her sake, and make that gentle- 
man believe she was thoroughly happy ; and, finally, she had 
to keep an eye upon No. 4 senior, who, as she was perfectly 
certain, was about in two minutes to be lost forever, or trampled 
to pieces in the crowd. 

These events took place in a quiet little street leading into 
the Champs Elysees, the entry of which we had almost reached 
by this time. The four detachments above described, which 
had been straggling a little in their passage down the street, 
closed up at the end of it, and stood for a moment huddled to- 
gether. No. 3, Miss X — , began speaking to her companion the 
great-grandmother. 

" Hush, my dear," said that old lady, looking round alarmed 
at her daughter. " Speak French^ And she straightway be- 
gan nervously to make a speech which she supposed to be in 
that language, but which was as much like French as Iroquois. 
The whole secret was out : you could read it in the grand- 
mother's face, who was doing all she could to keep from cry- 
ing, and looked as frightened as she dared to look. The two 
elder ladies had settled between them that there was going to 
be a general English slaughter that day, and had brought the 
children with them, so that they might all be murdered in 
company. 

God bless you, O women, moist-eyed and tender-hearted ! 
In those gentle silly tears of yours there is something touches 
one, be they never so foolish. I don't think there were many 
such natural drops shed that day as those which just made 
their appearance in the grandmother's eyes, and then went back 
again as if they had been ashamed of themselves, while the 
good lady and her little troop walked across the road. Think 
how happy she will be when night comes, and there has been 
no murder of English, and the brood is all nestled under her 
wings sound asleep, and she is lying awake thanking God that 
the day and its pleasures and pains are over. Whilst we were 

37 



c^g THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

considering these things, the grandfather had suddenly elevated 
No. 4 senior upon his left shoulder, and I saw the tartan hat 
of that young gentleman, and the bamboo-cane which had 
been transferred to him, high over the heads of the crowd on 
the opposite side through which the party moved. 

After this little procession had passed away — you may laugh 
at it, but upon my word and conscience, Miss Smith, I saw 
nothing in the course of the day which affected me more — after 
this little procession had passed away the other came, accom- 
panied by gun-banging, flag-waving, incense-burning, trumpets 
pealing, drums rolling, and at the close, received by the voice 
of six hundred choristers, sweetly modulated to the tones of 
fifteen score of fiddlers. Then you saw horse and foot, jack- 
boots and bearskin, cuirass and bayonet, national guard and 
line, marshals and generals all over gold, smart aids-de-camp 
galloping about like mad, and high in the midst of all, rising 
on his golden buckler, Solomon in all his glory, forsooth — Im- 
perial Caesar, with his crown over his head, laurels and stand- 
ards waving about his gorgeous chariot, and a million of 
people looking on in wonder and awe. 

His Majesty the Emperor and King reclined on his shield, 
with his head a little elevated. His Majesty's skull is volumi- 
nous, his forehead broad and large. We remarked that his Im- 
perial Majesty's brow was of a yellowish color, which appear- 
ance was also visible about the orbits of the eyes. He kept 
his eyelids constantly closed, by which we had the opportunity 
of observing that the upper lids were garnished with eye- 
lashes. Years and climate have effected upon the face of this 
great monarch only a trifling alteration ; we may say, indeed, 
that Time has touched his Imperial and Royal Majesty with 
the lightest feather in his wing. In the nose of the Conqueror 
of Austerlitz we remarked very little alteration : it is of the 
beautiful shape which we remember it possessed five-and- 
twenty years since, ere unfortunate circumstances induced him 
to leave us for a while. The nostril and the tube of the nose 
appear to have undergone some slight alteration, but in ex- 
amining a beloved object the eye of affection is perhaps too 
critical. Vive V Evipereiir ! The soldier of Marengo is among 
us again. His lips are thinner, perhaps, than they were be- 
fore ! how white his teeth are ! you can just see three of them 
pressing his under lip ; and pray remark the fullness of his 
cheeks and the round contour of his chin. Oh, those beau- 
tiful white hands! many a time have they patted the cheek of 
poor Josephine, and played with the black ringlets of her hair. 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



579 



She is dead now, and cold, poor creature; and so are Hor- 
tense and bold Eugene, " than whom the world never saw a 
curtier knight," as was said of King Arthur's Sir Lancelot. 
What a day would it have been for those three could they but 
have lived until now, and seen their hero returning ! Where's 
Ney ? His wife sits looking out from M. Flahaut's window yon- 
der, but the bravest of the brave is not with her. Murat too is 
absent : honest Joachim loves the Emperor at heart, and 
repents that he was not at Waterloo : who knows but that at 
the sight of the handsome swordsman those stubborn English 
" canaille " would have given way ? A king. Sire, is, you know, 
the greatest of slaves — State affairs of consequence — his Maj- 
esty the King of Naples is detained, no doubt. When we 
last saw the King, however, and his Highness the Prince of 
Elchingen, they looked to have as good health as ever they 
had in their lives, and we heard each of them calmly calling 
out " Fire ! " as they had done in numberless battles before. 

Is it possible ? can the Emperor forget ? We don't like to 
break it to him', but has he forgotten all about the farm at 
Pizzo, and the garden of the Observatory .? Yes, truly : there 
he lies on his golden shield, never stirring, never so much as 
lifting his eyelids, or opening his lips any wider. 

O vaniias vanitatum ! Here is our sovereign in all his 
glory, and they fired a thousand guns at Cherbourg and never 
woke him ! 

However, we are advancing matters by several hours, and 
you must give just as much credence as you please to the sub- 
joined remarks concerning the Procession, seeing that your 
humble servant could not possibly be present at it, being bound 
for the church elsewhere. 

Programmes, however, have been published of the affair, 
and your vivid fancy will not fail to give liffe to them, and the 
whole magnificent train will pass before you. 

Fancy then, that the guns are fired at Neuilly : the body 
landed at daybreak from the funereal barge, and transferred to 
the car ; and fancy the car, a huge Juggernaut of a machine, 
rolling on four wheels of an antique shape, which supported a 
basement adorned with golden eagles, banners, laurels, and 
velvet hangings. Above the hangings stand twelve golden 
statues with raised arms supporting a huge shield, on which 
the coffin lay. On the coffin was the imperial crown, covered 
with violet velvet crape, and the whole vast machine was livery. 
drawn by horses in superb housings, led by valets in the imperial 



S8o 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 
Fancy at the head of the procession first of all — 

The Gendarmerie of the Seine, with their trumpets and Colonel. 

The Municipal Guard (horse) with their trumpets, standard, and Colonel. 

Two squadrons of the 7th Lancers, witli Colonel, standard, and music. 

The Commandant of Paris and his StaiT. 

A battalion of Infantry of the Line, with their flag, sappers, drums, music, 
and Colonel. 

The Municipal Guard (foot), with flag, drums, and Colonel. 

The Sapper-pumpers, with ditto. 

Then picture to yourself more squadrons of Lancers and Cuirassiers. The 
General of the Division and his Staff; all officers of all arms employed at 
Palis, and unattached ; the Military School of Saint Cyr, the Polytechnic 
School, the School of the Etat-Major ; and the Professors and Staff of 
each. Go on imagining more battalions of Infantry, of Artillery, com- 
panies of Engineers, squadrons of Cuirassiers, ditto of the Cavalry, of the 
National Guard, and the first and second legions of ditto. 

Fancy a carriage, containing the Chaplain of the St. Helena expedition, the 
only clerical gentleman that formed a part of the procession. 

Fancy you hear the funeral music, and then figure in your mind's eye — 

The Emperor's Charger, that is. Napoleon's own saddle and bridle 
(wiien First Consul) upon a white horse. The saddle (which has been 
kept ever since in the Garde Meuble of the Crown) is of amaranth velvet, 
embroidered in gold : the holsters and housings are of the same rich 
material. On them you remark the attributes of Was, Commerce, Science 
and .^Vrt. The bits and stirrups are silver-gilt chased. Over the stirrups, 
two eagles were placed at the time of the empire. The horse was covered 
with a violet crape embroidered with golden bees. 

After this came more Soldiers, General Officers, Sub-Officers, Marshals, 
and what was said to be the prettiest sight almost of the whole, the ban- 
ners of the eighty-six Departments of France. These are due to the 
invention of M. Thiers, and were to have been accompanied by federates 
from each Department. But the Government very wisely mistrusted this 
and some other projects of Monsieur Thiers • and as for a federation, my 
dear, it has been tried. Next comes — 

His Royal Highness the Prince de Joinville. 

The 500 sailors of the " Belle Poule '' marching in double file on each 
side of 

THE CAR. 

[Hush ! the enormous crowd thrills as it passes, and only some few voices 

cry Vive P Empereur .' Shining golden in the frosty sun — with hundreds 

of thousands of eyes upon it, from houses and housetops, from balconies, 

black, purple, and tricolor, from tops of leafless trees, from behind long lines 
of glittering bayonets under schakos and bearskin caps, from behind the 
Line and the National Guard again, pushing, struggling, heav- 
•'ng, panting, eager, the heads of an enormous multitude 
stretching out to meet and follow it, amidst long avenues 
of columns, and statues gleaming white, of stand- 
ards rainbow-colored, of golden eagles, of pale 
funeral urns, of discharging odors amidst 

huge volumes of pitch-black smoke, 
THE GREAT IMPERIAL CHARIOT 

ROLLS MAJESTICALLY ON. 

The cords of the pall are held by two Marshals, an Admiral and General 

Bertrand ; who are followed by — 
The Prefects of the Seine and Police, &c. 
The Mayors of Paris, &c. 
The Members of the Old Guard, &c. 
A Squadron of Light Dragoons, &c. 
Lieutenant-General Schneider, &c. 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 581 

More cavalry, more infantry, more artillery, more everybody ; and as the 
procession passes, the Line and the National Guard forming line on each 
side of the road fall in and follow it, until it arrives at the Church of the 
Invalides, where the last honors are to be paid to it.] 

Among the company assembled under the dome of that 
edifice, the casual observer would not perhaps have remarked 
a gentleman of the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, who 
nevertheless was there. But as, my dear Miss Smith, the 
descriptions in this letter, from the words in page 578, line 15 
— the party moved — up to the words paid to it, on this page, 
have purely emanated from your obedient servant's fancy, and 
not from his personal observation (for no being on earth, except 
a newspaper reporter, can be in two places at once), permit me 
now to communicate to you what little circumstances fell under 
my own particular view on the day of the 15th of December. 

As we came out, the air and the buildings round about were 
tinged with purple, and the clear sharp half-moon before-men- 
tioned was still in the sky, where it seemed to be lingering as 
if it would catch a peep of the commencement of the famous 
procession. The Arc de Triomphe was shining in a keen frosty 
sunshine, and looking as clean and rosy as if it had just made 
its toilette. The canvas or pasteboard image of Napoleon, of 
which only the gilded legs had been erected the night previous, 
was now visible, body^ head, crown, sceptre and all, and made 
an imposing show. Long gilt banners were flaunting about, 
the imperial cipher and eagle, and the names of the battles and 
victories glittering in gold. The long avenues of the Champs 
Elysees had been covered with sand for the convenience of the 
great procession that was to tramp across it that day. Hun- 
dreds of people were marching to and fro, laughing, chattering, 
singing, gesticulating as happy Frenchmen do. There is no 
pleasanter sight than a French crowd on the alert for a festival, 
and nothing more catching than their good-humor. As for the 
notion which has been put forward by some of the opposition 
newspapers that the populace were on this occasion unusually 
solemn or sentimental, it would be paying a bad compliment to 
the natural gayety of the nation, to say that it was, on the morn- 
ing at least of the 15th of December, affected in any such 
absurd way. Itinerant merchants were shouting out lustily 
their commodities of segars and brandy, and the weather was 
so bitter cold, that they could not fail to find plenty of cus- 
tomers. Carpenters and workmen were still making a huge 
banging and clattering among the sheds which were built for 
the accommodation of the visitors. Some of these sheds were 



582 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

hung with black, such as one sees before churches in funerals ; 
some were robed in violet, in compliment to the Emperor whose 
mourning they put on. Most of them had fine tricolor hang- 
ings with appropriate inscriptions to the glory of the French 
arms. 

All along the Champs Elyse'es were urns of plaster-of-Paris 
destined to contain funeral incense and flames ; columns decor- 
ated with huge flags of blue, red, and white, embroidered with 
shining crowns, eagles, and N's in gilt paper, and statues of 
plaster representing Nymphs, Triumphs, Victories, or other 
female personages, painted in oil so as to represent marble. 
Real marble could have had no better effect, and the appear- 
ance of the whole was lively and picturesque in the extreme. 
On each pillar was a buckler of the color of bronze, bearing the 
name and date of a battle in gilt letters .- you had to walk 
through a mile-long avenue of these glorious reminiscences, 
telling of spots where, in the great imperial days, throats had 
been victoriously cut. 

As we passed down the avenue, several troops of soldiers 
met us : the garde-tminicipale a c/iei'a/, in brass helmets and 
shining jack-Jboots, noble-looking men, large, on large horses, 
the pick of the old army, as I have heard, and armed for the 
special occupation of peace-keeping : not the most glorious, 
but the best part of the soldier's duty, as I fancy. Then came 
a regiment of Carabineers, one of Infantry — little, alert, brown- 
faced, good-humored men, their band at their head playing 
sounding marches. These were followed by a regiment or 
detachment of the Municipals on foot — two or three inches 
taller than the men of the Line, and conspicuous for their neat- 
ness and discipline. By and by came a squadron or so of dra- 
goons of the National Guards : they are covered with straps, 
buckles, aiguillettes, and cartouche-boxes, and made under 
their tricolor cock's-plumes a show sufficiently warlike. The 
point which chiefly struck me on beholding these military men 
of the National Guard and the Line, was the admirable man- 
ner in which they bore a cold that seemed to me as sharp as 
the weather in the Russian retreat, through which cold the 
troops were trotting without trembling and in the utmost 
cheerfulness and good-humor. An aide-de-camp galloped past 
in white pantaloons. By heavens ! it made me shudder to 
look at him. 

With this profound reflection, we turned away to the right 
towards the hanging-bridge (where we met a detachment of 
young men of the Ecole de I'Etat Major, fine-looking lads, but 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 583 

sadly disfigured by the wearing of stays or belts, that make the 
waists of the French dandies of a most absurd tenuity), and 
speedily passed into the avenue of statues leading up to the 
Invalides. All these were statues of warriors from Ney to 
Charlemagne, modelled in clay for the nonce, and placed here 
to meet the corpse of the greatest warrior of all. Passing 
these, we had to walk to a little door at the back of the In- 
valides, where was a crowd of persons plunged in the deepest 
mourning, and pushing for places in the chapel within. 

The chapel is spacious and of no great architectural preten- 
sions, but was on this occasion gorgeously decorated in honor 
of the great person to whose body it was about to give shelter. 

We had arrived at nine : the ceremony was not to begin, 
they said, till two : we had five hours before us to see all that 
from our places could be seen. 

VVe saw that the roof, up to the first lines of architecture, 
was hung with violet ; beyond this with black. We saw N's, 
eagles, bees, laurel wreaths, and other such imperial emblems, 
adorning every nook and corner of the edifice. Between the 
arches, on each side of the aisle, were painted trophies, on 
which were written the names of some of Napoleon's Generals 
and of their principal deeds of arms — and not their deeds of 
arms alone, pardi, but their coats of arms too. O stars and 
garters ! but this is too much. What was Ney s paternal coat, 
prithee, or honest Junot's quarterings, or the venerable escut- 
cheon of King Joachim's father, the innkeeper? 

You- and I, dear Miss Smith, know the exact value of 
heraldic bearings. We know that though the greatest pleasure 
of all is to act like a gentleman, it is a pleasure, nay a merit, to 
be one — to come of an old stock, to have an honorable pedi- 
gree, to be able to say that centuries back our fathers had 
gentle blood, and to us transmitted the same. There is a good 
in gentility : the man who questions it is envious, or a coarse 
dullard not able to perceive the difference between high breed- 
ing and low. One has in the same way heard a man brag that 
he did not know the difference between wines, not he — give him 
a good glass of port and he would pitch all your claret to the 
deuce. My love, men often brag about their own dulness in 
this way, 

In the matter of gentlemen, democrats cry, " Psha ! Give 
us one of Nature's gentlemen, and hang your aristocrats." And 
so indeed Nature does make some gentlemen — a few here and 
there. But Art makes most. Good birth, that, is, good hand- 
some well-formed fathers and mothers, nice cleanly nursery- 



584 '^HE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 

maids, good meals, good physicians, good education, few cares, 
pleasant easy habits of life, and luxuries not too great or 
enervating, but only refining — a course of these going on for a 
few generations are the best gentleman-makers in the world, 
and beat Nature hollow. 

If, respected Madam, you say that there is something better 
than gentility in this wicked world, and that honesty and per- 
sonal worth are more valuable than all the politeness and high- 
breeding that ever wore red-heeled pumps, knights' spurs, or 
Hoby's boots, Titmarsh for one is never going to say you nay. 
If you even go so far as to say that the very existence of this 
super-genteel society among us, from the slavish respect that 
we pay to it, from the dastardly manner in which we attempt to 
imitate its airs and ape its vices, goes far to destroy honesty of 
intercourse, to make us meanly ashamed of our natural affec- 
tions and honest, harmless usages, and so does a great deal 
more harm than it is possible it can do good by its example — ■ 
perhaps. Madam, you speak with some sort of reason. Potato 
myself, I can't help seeing that the tulip yonder has the best 
place in the garden, and the most sunshine, and the most 
water, and the best tending — and not liking him over well. 
But I can't help acknowledging ihat Nature has given him a 
much finer dress than ever I can hope to have, and of this, at 
least, must give him the benefit. 

Or say, we are so ma'.^y cocks and hens, my dear {sans 
arriere pensee)^ with our crops pretty full, our plumes pretty sleek, 
decent picking here and there in the straw-yard, andto lerable 
siiug roosting in the barn : yonder on the terrace, in the sun, 
walks Peacock, stretching his proud neck, squealing every now 
and then in the most pert fashionable voice and flaunting his 
great supercilious dandified tail. Don't let us be too angry, 
my dear, with the useless, haughty, insolent creature, because 
he despises us. Sotnet/iingis there about Peacock that we don't 
possess. Strain j^our neck ever so, you can't make it as long 
or as blue as his — cock your tail as much as you please, and it 
will never be half so fine to look at. But the most absurd, 
disgusting contemptible sight in the world would you and I be, 
leaving the barn-door for my lady's flower-garden, for saving 
our natural sturdy walk for the peacock's genteel rickety stride, 
and adopting the squeak of his voice in the place of our gallant 
lusty cock-a-doodledooing. 

Do you take the allegory ? I love to speak in such, and the 
above types have been presented to my mind while sitting 
opposite a gimcrack coat-of-arms and coronet that are painted 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



585 



in the Invalides Church, and assigned to one of the Emperor's 
Generals. 

Vcntrebleii ! Madam, what need have they of coats-of-arms 
and coronets, and wretched imitations of old exploded aristo- 
cratic gewgaws that they had flung out of the country — with the 
heads of the owners in them sometimes, for indeed they were 
not particular — a score of years before ? What business, for- 
sooth, had they to be meddling with gentility and aping its 
ways, who had courage, merit, daring, genius sometimes, and a 
pride of their own to support, if proud they were inclined to be ? 
A clever young man (who was not of high family himself, but 
had been bred up genteely at Eton and the university) — young 
Mr. George Canning, at the commencement of the French 
Revolution, sneered at " Roland the Just, with ribbons in his 
shoes," and the dandies, who then wore buckles, voted the 
sarcasm monstrous killing. It was a joke, my dear, worthy of 
a lackey, or of a silly smart parvenu, not knowing the society 
into which his luck had cast him (God help him ! in later years, 
they taught him what they were !), and fancying in his silly 
intoxication that simplicity was ludicrous and fashion respect- 
able. See, now, fifty years are gone, and where are shoebuckles ? 
Extinct, defunct, kicked into the irrevocable past off the toes 
of all Europe ! 

How fatal to the parvenu, throughout history, has been this 
respect for shoebuckles. Where, for instance, would the Empire 
of Napoleosn have been, if Ney and Lannes had never sported 
such a thing as a coat-of-arms, and had only written their simple 
names on their shields, after the fashion of Desaix's scutcheon 
yonder ? — the bold Republican who led the crowning charge at 
Marengo, and sent the best blood of the Holy Roman Empire to 
the right-about, before the wretched misbegotten imperial 
heraldry was born, that was to prove so disastrous to the father 
of it. It has always been so; They won't amalgamate. A 
country must be governed by the one principle or the other. 
But give, in a republic, an aristocracy ever so little chance, and 
it works and plots and sneaks and bullies and sneers itself into 
place, and you find democracy out of doors. Is it good that the 
aristocracy should so triumph ? — that is a question that you may 
settle according to your own notions and taste ; and permit me 
to say, I do not care twopence how you settle it. Large books 
have been written upon the subject in a variety of languages, and 
coming to a variety of conclusions. Great statesmen are there 
in our country, from Lord Londonderry down to Mr. Vincent, 
each in his degree maintaining his different opinion. But here, 



586 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

in fhe matter of Napoleon, is a simple fact ; he founded a great, 
glorious, strong, potent republic, able to cope with the best 
aristocracies in the world, and perhaps to beat them all ; he 
converts his republic into a monarchy, and surrounds his 
monarchy with what he calls aristocratic institutions ; and you 
know what becomes of him. The people estranged, the aristo- 
cracy faithless (when did they- ever pardon one who was not 
themselves ?) — the imperial fabric tumbles to the ground. If it 
teaches nothing else, my dear, it teaches one a great point of 
policy — namely, to stick by one's party. 

While these thoughts (and sundry others relative to the hor- 
rible cold of the place, the intense dullness of delay, the stupidity 
of leaving a warm bed and a breakfast in order to witness a 
procession that is much better performed at a theatre) — while 
these thoughts were passing in the mind, the church began to 
fill apace, and you saw that the hour of the ceremony was 
drawing near. 

Imprimis, came men with lighted staves, and set fire to at 
least ten thousand wax-candles that were hanging in brilliant 
chandeliers in various parts of the chapel. Curtains were 
dropped over the upper windows as these illuminations were 
effected, and the church was left only to the funereal light of the 
spermaceti. To the right was the dome, round the cavity of 
which sparkling lamps were set, that designed the shape of it 
brilliantly against the darkness. In the midst, and where the 
altar used to stand, rose the catafalque. ;\nd why not ? Who is 
God here but Napoleon ? and in him the skeptics have already 
ceased to believe ; but the people does still somewhat. He 
and Louis XIV. divide the worship of the place between them. 

As for the catafalque, the best that I can say for it is that it 
is really a noble and imposing-looking edifice, with tall pillar^ 
supporting a grand dome, with innumerable escutcheons, stand- 
ards, and allusions military and funereal. A great eagle of 
course tops the whole : tripods burning spirits of wine stand 
round this kind of dead man's throne, and as we saw it (by peer- 
ing over the heads of our neighbors in the front rank), it 
looked, in the midst of the black concave, and under the effect 
of half-a-thousand flashing cross-lights, properly grand and tall. 
The effect of the whole chapel, however (to speak the jargon 
of the painting-room), was spoiled by being cut up : there were 
too many objects for the eye to rest upon : the ten thousand 
wax candles, for instance, in their numberless twinkling chan- 
deliers, the raw tranchant colors of the new banners, wreaths, 
bees, N's, and other emblems dotting the place all over, and 
incessantly puzzling, or rather bothering the beholder. 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



587- 



High overhead, in a sort of mist, with the glare of their 
original colors worn down by dust and time, hung long rows or 
dim ghostly-looking standards, captured in old days from the 
enemy. They were, I thought, the best and most solemn part 
of the show. 

To suppose that the people were bound to be solemn during 
the ceremony is to exact from them something quite needless 
and unnatural. The very fact of a squeeze dissipates all 
solemnity. One great crowd is always, as I imagine, pretty 
much like another. In the course of the last few years 1 have 
seen three ; that attending the coronation of our present sov- 
ereign, that which went to see Courvoisier hanged, and this 
which witnessed the Napoleon ceremony. The people so 
assembled for hours together are jocular rather than solemn, 
seeking to pass away the weary time with the best amuse- 
ments that will offer. There was, to be sure, in all the scenes 
above alluded to, just one moment — one particular moment — 
when the universal people feels a shock and is for that second 
serious. 

But except for that second of time, I declare I saw no 
seriousness here beyond that of ennui. The church began to 
fill with personages of all ranks and conditions. First opposite 
our seats came a company of fat grenadiers of the National 
Guard, who presently, at the word of command, put their 
muskets down against benches and wainscots, until the arrival 
of the procession. For seven hours these men formed the 
object of the most anxious solicitude of all the ladies and 
gentlemen seated on our benches : they began stamp their feet, 
for the cold was atrocious, and we were frozen where we sat. 
Some of them fell to blowing their fingers ; one executed a 
kind of dance, such as one sees often here in cold weather — 
the individual jumps repeatedly upon one leg, and kicks out 
the other violently, meanwhile his hands are flapping across his 
chest. Some fellows opened their cartouche-boxes, and from 
them drew eatables of various kinds. You can't think how 
anxious we were to know the qualities of the same. " Tiens, 
ce gros qui mange une cuisse de volaille ! " — " II a du Jambon, 
celui-la." " I should like some, too,** growls an Englishman, 
"for I hadn't a morsel of breakfast," and so on. This is the 
way, my dear, that we see Napoleon buried. 

Did you ever see a chicken escape from clown in a pan- 
tomime, and hop over into the pit, or amongst the fiddlers .'' and 
have you not seen the shrieks of enthusiastic laughter that the 
wondrous incident occasions ? We had our chicken, of course ; 



^88 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

there never was a public crowd without one. A poor unhappy 
woman in a greasy plaid cloak, with a battered rose-colored 
plush bonnet, was seen taking her place among the stalls allotted 
to the grandees. " Voyez done I'Anglaise," said everybody, 
and it was too true. You could swear that the wretch was an 
Englishwoman : a bonnet was never made or worn so in any 
other country. Half an hour's delightful amusement did this 
lady give us all. She was whisked from seat to seat by the 
huissiers, and at every change of place woke a peal of laughter. 
I was glad, however, at the end of the day to see the old pink 
bonnet over a very comfortable seat, which somebody had not 
claimed and she had kept. 

Are not these remarkable incidents ? The next wonder we 
saw was the arrival of a set of tottering old Invalids, who took 
their places under us with drawn sabres. Then came a superb 
drum-major, a handsome smiling good-humored giant of a 
man, his breeches astonishingly embroidered with silver lace. 
Him a dozen little drummer-boys followed — "the little dar- 
lings ! " all the ladies cried out in a breath : they were indeed 
pretty little fellows, and came and stood close under us : the 
huge drum-major smiled over his little red-capped flock, and 
for many hours in the most perfect contentment twiddled his 
mustaches and played with the tassels of his cane. 

Now the company began to arrive thicker and thicker. A 
whole covey of ConseiUers d' JStat C2im& in, in blue coats, em- 
broidered with blue silk, then came a crowd of lawyers in 
toques and caps, among whom were sundry venerable Judges 
in scarlet, purple velvet, and ermine — a kind of Bajazet cos- 
tume. Look there ! there is the Turkish Ambassador in his 
red cap, turning his solemn brown face about and looking 
preternaturally wise. The Deputies walk in in a body. Guizot 
is not there : he passed by just now in full ministerial costume. 
Presently little Thiers saunters back: what a clear, broad, 
sharp-eyed face the fellow has, with his gray hair cut down so 
demure ! A servant passes, pushing through the crowd a 
shabby wheel-chair. It has just brought old Mon9ey the Gov- 
ernor of the Invalids, the honest old man who defended Paris 
so stoutly in 1814. He has been very ill, and is worn down 
almost by infirmities : but in his illness he was perpetually ask- 
ing, " Doctor, shall I live till the 15th? Give me till then, and 
I die contented." One can't help believing that the old man's 
wish is honest, however one may doubt the piety of another 
illustrious Marshal, who once carried a candle before Charles 
X. in a procession, and has been this morning to Neuilly to 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON.' 589 

kneel and pray at the foot of Napoleon's cofiin. He might 
have said his prayers at home, to be sure ; but don't let us ask 
too much : that kind of reserve is not a Frenchman's charac- 
teristic. ' ■' 

Bang — bang ! At about half-past two a dull sound of can- 
nonading was heard without the church, and signals took place 
between the Commandant of the Invalids, of the National 
Guards, and the big drum-major. Looking to these troops 
(the fat Nationals were shuffling into line again) the two Com- 
mandants uttered, as nearly as I could catch them, the follow- 
ing words — 

" Harrum Hump ! " 

At once all the National bayonets were on the present, and 
the sabres of the old Invalids up. The big drum-major looked 
round at the children, who began very slowly and solemnly on 
their drums, Rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub — (count two between 
each) — rub-dub-dub, and a great procession of priests came 
down from the altar. 

First, there was a tall handsome cross-bearer, bearing a long 
gold cross, of which the front was turned towards his grace 
the Archbishop. Then came a double row of about sixteen 
incense-boys, dressed in white surplices : the first boy, about 
six years old, the last with whiskers and of the height of a man. 
Then followed a regiment of priests in black tippets and white 
gowns : they had black hoods, like the moon when she is at her 
third quarter, wherewith those who wete bald (many were, and 
fat too) covered themselves. All the reverend men held their 
heads meekly down, and affected to be reading in their bre- 
viaries. 

After the Priests came some Bishops of the neighboring dis- 
tricts, in purple, with crosses sparkling on their episcopal 
bosoms. 

Then came, after more priests, a set of men whom I have 
never seen before — a kind of ghostly heralds, young and hand- 
some men, some of them in stiff tabards of black and silver, 
their eyes to the ground, their hands placed at right angles with 
their chests. 

Then came two gentlemen bearing remarkable tall candle- 
sticks, with candles of corresponding size. One was burning 
brightly, but the wind (that chartered libertine) had blown out 
the other, which nevertheless kept its place in the procession — • 
1 wondered to myself whether the reverend gentleman who car- 
ried the extinguished candle, felt disgusted, humiliated, mor- 
tified — perfectly conscious that the eyes of many thousands of 



59° 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



people were bent upon that bit of refractory wax. We all of 
us looked at it with intense interest. 

Another cross-bearer, behind whom came a gentleman carry- 
ing an instrument like a bedroom candlestick. 

His Grandeur Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris : he 
was in black and white, his eyes were cast to the earth, his 
hands were together at right angles from his chest; on his 
hands were black gloves, and on the black gloves sparkled the 
sacred episcopal — what do I say .'' — archiepiscopal ring. On 
his head was the mitre. It is unlike the godly coronet that 
figures upon the coachpanels of our own Right Reverend Bench, 
The Archbishop's mitre may be about a yard high : formed 
within probably of consecrated pasteboard, it is without covered 
by a sort of watered silk of white and silver. On the two peaks 
at the top of the mitre are two very little spangled tassels, that 
frisk and twinkle about in a very agreeable manner. 

Monseigneur stood opposite to us for some time, when I had 
the opportunity to note the above remarkable phenomena. He 
stood opposite me for some time, keeping his eyes steadily on 
the ground, his hands before him, a small clerical train follow- 
ing after. Why didn't they move ? There was the National 
Guard keeping on presenting arms, the little drummers going 
on rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub — in the same steady, slow way, 
and the Procession never moved an inch. There was evidently, 
to use an elegant phrase, a hitch somewhere, 

\E?itt'r a fat priest, who bustles up to the drum-ma;'or.^ 

Fat priest — " Taisez-vous." 

Liitle drummer — Rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub — rub-dub- 
dub, &c. 

Drum-major — " Qu'est-ce done ? " 

Fat priest — " Taisez-vous, vous dis-je ; ce n'est pas le corps. 
II n'arrivera pas — pour une heure." 

The little drums were instantly hushed, the procession 
turned to the right about, and walked back to the altar again, 
the blown-out candle that had been on the near side of us before 
was now on the off side, the National Guards set down their 
muskets and began at their sandwiches again. We had to wait 
an hour and a half at least before the great procession arrived. 
The guns without went on booming all the while at intervals, 
and as we heard each, the audience gave a kind of " ahahah !'* 
such as you hear when the rockets go up at Vauxhall, 

At last the real Procession came, 

Then the drums began to beat as formerly, the Nationals to 
get under arms, the clergymen were sent for and went, and pres 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLJ^ON 



591 



entl}^ — yes, there was the tall cross-bearer at the head of the 
procession, and they came back I 

They chanted something in a weak, snuffling, lugubrious 
manner, to the melancholy bray of a serpent. 

Crash ! however, Mr. Habeneck and the fiddlers in the organ- 
loft pealed out a wild shrill march, which stopped the reverend 
gentleman, and in the midst of this music — 

And of a great trampling of feet and clattering, 

And of a great crowd of Generals and Officers in fine clothes. 

With the Prince de Joinville marching quickly at the head 
of the procession, 

And while ever^^body's heart was thumping as hard as 
possible. 

Napoleon's coffin passed. 

It was done in an instant. A box covered with a great red 
cross — a dingy-looking crown lying on the top of it — seamen on 
one side and Invalids on the other — they had passed in an in^ 
stant and were up the aisle. 

A faint snuffling sound, as before, was heard from the offi- 
ciating priests, but we knew of nothing more. It is said that 
old Louis Philippe was standing at the catafalque, whither the 
Prince de Joinville advanced and said, " Sire, I bring you the 
body of the Emperor Napoleon." 

Louis Philippe answered, " I receive it in the name of 
France." Bertrand put on the body the most glorious victor- 
ious sword that ever has been forged since the apt descendants 
of the first murderer learned how to hammer steel; and the 
coffin was placed in the temple prepared for it. 

The six hundred singers and the fiddlers now commenced 
the playing and singing of a piece of music ; and a part of the 
crew of the " Belle Poule " skipped into the places that had 
been kept for them under us, and listened to the music, chew- 
ing tobacco. While the actors and fiddlers were going on, most 
of the spirits-of-wine lamps on altars went out. 

When we arrived in the open air we passed through the 
court of the Invalides, where thousands of people had been as- 
sembled, but where the benches were now quite bare. Then 
we came on to the terrace before the place : the old soldiers 
were firing off the great guns, which made a dreadful stunning 
noise, and frightened some of us, who did not care to pass be- 
fore the cannon and be knocked down even by the* wadding. 
The guns were fired in honor of the King, who was going home 
by a back door. All the forty thousand people who covered 
the great stands before the Hotel had gone away too. The Im« 



592 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



perial Barge had been dragged up the river, and was Ij'ing 
lonely along the Quay, examined by some few shivering people 
on the shore. 

It was five o'clock when we reached home : the stars were 
shining keenly out of the frosty sky, and Frangois told me that 
dinner was just ready. 

In this manner, my dear Miss Smith, the great Napoleon was 
buried. 

Farewell. 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 



<993> 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK* 

Accusations of ingratitude, and just accusations no doubt, 
are made against every inhabitant of this wielded world, and 
the fact is, that a man who is ceaselessly engaged in its trouble 
and turmoil, borne hither and thither upon the fierce waves of 
the crowd, bustling, shifting, struggling.to keep himself some- 
what above water — fighting for reputation, or more likely for 
bread, and ceaselessly occupied to-day with plans for appeasing 
the eternal appetite of inevitable hunger to-morrow — a man in 
such straits has hardly time to think of anything but himself, 
and, as in a sinking ship, must make his own rush for the boats, 
and fight, struggle, and trample for safety. In the midst of 
such a combat as this, the " ingenious arts, which prevent the 
ferocity of the manners, and act upon them as an emollient " 
(as the philosophic bard remarks in the Latin Grammar) are 
likely to be jostled to death, and then forgotten! The world 
will allow no such compromises between it and that which does 
not belong to it — no two gods must we serve ; but (as one has 
seen in some old portraits) the horrible glazed eyes of Necessity 
are always fixed upon you ; fly away as you will, black Care sits 
behind you, and with his ceaseless gloomy croaking drowns 
the voice of all more cheerful companions. Happv he whose 
fortune has placed him where there is calm and plenty, and 
who has the wisdom not to give up his quiet in quest of vision- 
ary gain. 

Here is, no doubt, the reason why a man, after the period 
of his boyhood, or first youth, makes so few friends. Want 
and ambition (new acquaintances which are introduced to him 
along with his beard) thrust away all other society from him. 
Some old friends remain, it is true, but these are become as a 
habit — a part of your selfishness ; and, for new ones, they are 
selfish as you are. Neither member of the new partnership has 
the capital of affection and kindly feeling, or can even afford 

* Reprinted from the Westminster Review for June, 1840. (No. 66.) 

(595) 



596 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 



the time that is requisite for the establishment of the new firm. 
Damp and chill the shades of the prison-house begm to close 
round us, and that " vision splendid " which has accompanied 
our steps in our journey daily farther from the east, fades away 
and dies into the light of common day. 

And what a common day ! what a foggy, dull, shivering 
apology for light is this kind of muddy twilight through which 
we are about to tramp and flounder for the rest of our exist- 
ence, wandering farther and farther from the beauty and fresh- 
ness and from the kindly gushing springs of clear gladness 
that made all round us green in our youth ! One wanders 
and gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in 
a storm of politics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to 
rise — to mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink 
a stone to the bottom. 

The reader who has seen the name affixed to the head of 
this article scarcely expected to be entertained with a decla- 
mation upon ingratitude, youth, and the vanity of human pur- 
suits, which may seem at first sight to have little to do with 
the subject in hand. But (although we reserve the privilege 
of discoursing upon whatever subject shall suit us, and by no 
means admit the public has any right to ask in our sentences 
for any meaning, or any connection whatever) it happens that, 
in this particular instance, there is an undoubted connection, 
In Susan's case, as recorded by Wordsworth, what connection 
•had the corner of Wood Street with a mountain ascending, 
a vision of trees, and a nest by the Dove ? Why should 
the song of a thrush cause bright volumes of vapor to glide 
through Lothbury, and a river to flow on through the vale of 
Cheapside? As she stood at the corner of Wood Street, 
a map and a pail in her hand most likely, she heard the 
bird singing, and straightway began pining and yearning for 
the days of her youth, forgetting the proper business of 
the pail and mop. Even so we are moved by the sight 
of some of Mr. Cruikshank's works — the " Busen fiihlt sich 
jugendlioh erschiittert," the " schwankende Gestalten " of 
youth flit before one again, — Cruikshank's thrush begins 
to pipe and carol, as in the days of boyhood ; hence misty 
moralities, reflections, and sad and pleasant remembrances 
arise. He is the friend of the young especially. Have we not 
read all the story-books that his wonderful pencil has illus- 
trated t Did we not forego tarts, in order to buy his " Break- 
ing-up," or his " Fashionable Monstrosities " of the year eight- 
een hundred and something 1 Have we not before us, at this 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 



597 



very moment, a print, — one of the admirable " Illustrations of 
Phrenology " — which entire work was purchased by a joint-stock 
company of boys, each drawing lots afterwards for the separate 
prints, and taking his choice in rotation ? The writer of this, 
too, had the honor of drawing the fifst lot, and seized imme- 
diately upon " Philoprogenitiveness " — a marvellous print (our 
copy is not at all improved by being colored, which operation 
we performed on it ourselves} — a marvellous print, indeed, — 
full of ingenuity and fine jovial humor. A father, possessor of 
an enormous nose and family, is surrounded by the latter, who 
are, some of them, embracing the former. The composition 
writhes and twists about like the Kermes of Rubens. No less 
than seven little men and women in nightcaps, in frocks, in 
bibs, in breeches, are clambering about the head, knees, and 
arms of the man with the nose ; their noses, too, are preternat- 
urally developed — the twins in the cradle have noses of the 
most considerable kind. The second daughter, who is watch- 
ing them ; the youngest but two, who sits squalling in a certain 
wicker chair ; the eldest son, who is yawning ; the eldest daugh- 
ter, who is preparing with the gravy of two mutton-chops a 
savory dish of Yorkshire pudding for eighteen persons ; the 
youths who are examining her operations (one a literary gentle- 
man, in a remarkably neat nightcap and pinafore, who has just 
had his finger in the pudding) \ the- genius who is at work on 
the slate, and the two honest lads who are hugging the good- 
humored washerwoman, their mother, — all, all, save this worthy 
woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome certainly 
are they, and yet everybody must be charmed with the picture. 
It is full of grotesque beauty. The artist has at the back of 
his own skull, we are certain, a huge bump of philoprogenitive- 
ness. He loves children in his heart ; every one of those he 
has drawn is perfectly happy, and jovial, and affectionate, and 
innocent as possible. He makes them wdth large noses, but he 
loves them, and you always find something kind in the midst 
of his humor, and the ugliness redeemed by a sly touch of 
beauty. The smiling mother reconciles one with all the hideous 
family ; they have all something of the mother in them — some- 
thing kind, and generous, and tender. 

Knight's, in Sweeting's Alley ; Fairburn's, in a court off 
Ludgate Hill ; Hone's, in Fleet Street — bright, enchanted 
palaces, which George Cruikshank used to people with grinning, 
fantastical imps, and merry, harmless sprites, — where are they ? 
Fairburn's shop knows him no more ; not only has Knight 
disappeared from Sweeting's Alley, but, as we are given to 



598 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

understand, Sweeting's Alley has disappeared from the face of 
the ^lobe. Slop, the atrocious Castlereagh, the sainted Caro- 
line (in a tight pelisse, with feathers in her head), the " Dandy 
of sixty," who used to glance at us from Hone's friendly win- 
dows — where are they ? •Mr. Cruikshank may have drawn a 
thousand better things since the days when these were ; but 
they are to us a thousand times more pleasing than anything 
else he has done. How we used to believe in them ! to stray 
miles out of the way on holidays, in order to ponder for an 
hour before that delightful window in Sweeting's Alley ! in 
walks through Fleet Street, to vanish abruptly down Fairburn's 
passage, and there make one at his " charming gratis " exhibi- 
tion. There used to be a crowd round the window in those 
days, of grinning, good-natured mechanics, who spelt the songs, 
and spoke them out for the benefit of the company, and who 
received the points of humor with a general sympathizing roar. 
Where are these people now .'' You never hear any laughing 
at HB. ; his pictures are a great deal too genteel for that — • 
polite points of wit, which strike one as exceedingly clever and 
pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet, gentlemanlike kind 
of way. 

There must be no smiling with Cruikshank. A man who 
does not laugh outright is a dullard, and has no heart ; even 
the old dandy of sixty must have laughed at his own wondrous 
grotesque image, as they say Louis Philippe did, who saw all 
the caricatures that were made of himself. And there are 
some of Cruikshank's designs which have the blessed faculty 
of creating laughter as often as you see them. As Diggory 
says in the play, who is bidden by his master not to laugh while 
waiting at table — " Don't tell the story of Grouse in the Gun- 
room, master, or I can't help laughing." Repeat that history 
ever so often, and at the proper moment, honest Diggory is 
sure to explode. Every man, no doubt, who lov&s Cruikshank 
has his " Grouse in the Gun-room." There is a fellow in the 
*' Points of Humor " who is offering to eat up a certain little 
general, that has made us happy any time these sixteen years • 
his huge mouth is a perpetual well of laughter — buckets full of 
fun can be drawn from it. We have formed no such friend- 
ships as that boyish one of the man with the mouth. But 
though, in our eyes, Mr. Cruikshank reached his apogee some 
eighteen years since, it must not be imagined that such is really 
the case. Eighteen sets of children have since then learned to 
love and admire him, and may many more of their successors 
be brought up in the same delightful faith. It is not the artist 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 



599 



who fails, but the men who grow cold — the men, from whom the 
illusions (why illusions ? realities) of youth disappear one by 
one ; who have no leisure to be happy, no blessed holidays, 
but only fresh cares at Midsummer and Christmas, being the 
inevitable seasons which bring us bills instead of pleasures. 
Tom, who comes bounding home from school, has the doctor's 
account in his trunk, and his father goes to sleep at the panto- 
mime to which he takes him. Pater vifelix, you too have 
laughed at clown, and the magic wand of spangled harlequin; 
what delightful enchantment did it wave around you, in the 
golden days " when George the Third was king ! " But our 
clown lies in his grave ; and our harlequin, Ellar, prince of 
how many enchanted islands, was he not at Bow Street the 
other day,* in his dirty, tattered, faded motley — seized as a 
law-breaker, for acting at a penny theatre, after having well- 
nigh starved in the streets, where nobody would listen to his 
old guitar ? No one gave a shilling to bless him : not one of 
us who owe him so much. 

We know not if Mr. Cruikshank will be very well pleased 
at finding his name in such company as that of Clown and 
Harlequin ; but he, like them, is certainly the children's friend. 
His drawings abound in feeling for these little ones, and hid- 
eous as in the course of his duty he is from time to time com- 
pelled to design them, he never sketches one without a certain 
pity for it, and imparting to the figure a certain grotesque 
grace. In happy schoolboys he revels ; plum-pudding and 
holidays his needle has engraved over and over again ; there 
is a design in one of the comic almanacs of some young gentle- 
men who are employed in administering to a schoolfellow 
the correction of the pump, which is as graceful and elegant 
as a drawing of Stothard. Dull books about children George 
Cruikshank makes bright with illustrations — there is one pub- 
lished by the ingenious and opulent Mr. Tegg. It is entitled 
" Mirth and Morality," the mirth being, for the most part, on 
the side of the designer — the morality, unexceptionable cer- 
tainly, the author's capital. Here are then, to these moralities, 
a smiling train of mirths supplied by George Cruikshank. 
See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a common ! 
Such a light, brisk, airy, gentlemanlike drawing was never 
made upon such a theme. Who, cries the author — 

" Who has not chased the butterfly, 

And crushed its slender legs and wings, 
And heaved a moralizing sigh : 

Alas ! how frail are human things ! " 

♦ This was written in 1840. 



6op CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

A very unexceptionable morality truly; but it would have 
puzzled another than George Cruikshank to make mirth out of 
it as he has done. Away, surely not on the wings of these 
verses, Cruikshank's imagination begins to soar ; and he 
makes us three darling little men on a green common, backed 
by old farm-houses, somewhere about May. A great mixture 
of blue and clouds in the air, a strong fresh breeze stirring, 
Tom's jacket flapping in the same, in order to bring down the 
insect queen or king of spring that is fluttering above him, — • 
he renders all this with a few strokes on a little block of wood 
not two inches square, upon which one may gaze for hours, so 
merry and life-like a scene does it present. What a charming 
creative power is this, what a privilege — to be a god, and 
create little worlds upon paper, and whole generations of 
smiling, jovial men, women, and children half inch high, whose 
portraits are carried abroad, and have the faculty of making 
us monsters of six feet curious and happy in our turn. Now, 
who would imagine that an artist could make anything of such 
a subject as this ? The writer begins by stating, — 

" I love to go back to the days of my youth, 

And to reckon my joys to the letter. 
And to count o'er the friends that I have in the world, 

Ay, and those who are gone are to a better.''^ 

This brings him to the consideration of his uncle. " Of all 
the men I have ever known," says he, " my uncle united the 
greatest degree of cheerfulness with the sobriety of manhood. 
Though a man when I was a boy, he was yet one of the most 
agreeable companions I ever possessed. * * * He embarked 
for America, and nearly twenty years passed by before he 
came back again; * * * but oh, how altered! — he was in 
every sense of the word an old man, his body and mind were 
enfeebled, and second childishness had come upon him. How 
often have I bent over him, vainly endeavoring to recall to his 
memory the scenes we had shared together : and how fre- 
quently, with an aching heart, have I gazed on his vacant and 
lustreless eye, while he has amused himself in clapping his 
hands and singing with a quavering voice a verse of a psalm." 
Alas ! such are the consequences of long residences in America' 
and of old age even in uncles ! Well, the point of this mo- 
rality is, that the uncle one day in the morning of life vowed 
that he would catch his two nephews and tie them together, 
ay, and actually did so, for all the efforts the rogues made to 
run away from him ; but he was so fatigued that he declared 
he never would make the attempt again, whereupon the nephew 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 60 1 

remarks, — " Often since then, when engaged in enterprises be- 
yond my strength, have I called to mind the determination of 
my uncle." 

Does it not seem impossible to make a picture out of this ? 
And yet George Cruikshank has produced a charming design, 
in which the uncles and nephews are so prettily portrayed that 
one is reconciled to their existence, with all their moralities. 
Many more of the mirths in this little book are excellent, es- 
pecially a great figure of a parson entering church on horse- 
back, — an enormous parson truly, calm, unconscious, unwieldy. 
As Zeuxis had a bevy of virgins in order to make his famous 
picture — his express virgin — a clerical host must have passed 
under Cruikshank's eyes before he sketched this little enor- 
mous parson of parsons. 

Being on the subject of children's books, how shall we 
enough praise the delightful German nursery-tales, and Cruik- 
shank's illustrations of them t We coupled his name with 
pantomime awhile since, and sure never pantomimes were more 
charming than these. Of all the artists that ever drew, from 
Michael Angelo upwards and downwards, Cruikshank was the 
n: an to illustrate these tales, and give them just the proper 
admixture of the grotesque, the wonderful, and the graceful. 
May all Mother Bunch's collection be similarlj^ indebted to 
him ; may "Jack the Giant Killer," may "Tom Thumb," may 
" Puss in Boots," be one day revivified by his pencil. Is not 
Whittington sitting yet on Highgate Hill, and poor Cinderella 
(in the sweetest of all fairy stories) still pining in her lonely 
chimney nook ? A man who has a true affection for these de- 
lightful companions of his youth is bound to be grateful to 
them if he can, and we pray Mr. Cruikshank to remember 
them. 

It is folly to say that this or that kind of humor is too good 
for the public, that only a chosen few can relish it. The best 
humor that we know of has been as eagerly received by the 
public as by the most delicate connoisseur. There is hardly a 
man in England who can read but will laugh at Falstaff and 
the humor of Joseph Andrews ; and honest Mr. Pickwick's 
story can be felt and loved by any person above the age of six. 
Some may have a keener enjoyment of it than others, but all 
the world can be merry over it, and is always ready to welcome- 
it. The best criterion of good-humor is success, and what a 
share of this has Mr. Cruikshank had ! how many millions of 
mortals has he made happy ! We have heard very profound 
persons talk philosophically of the marvellous and mysterious 



6o2 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

manner in which he has suited himself to the time— ^// vibrer 
la fibre populaire {?is Napoleon boasted of himself), supplied a 
peculiar want felt at a peculiar period, the simple secret of 
which is, as we take it, that he, living amongst the public, has 
with them a general wide-hearted sympathy, that he laughs at 
what they laugh at, that he has a kindly spirit of enjoyment, 
with not a morsel of mysticism in his composition ; that he 
pities and loves the poor, and jokes at the follies of the great, 
and that he addresses all in a perfectly sincere and manly way. 
To be greatly successful as a professional humorist, as in any 
other calling, a man must be quite honest, and show that his 
heart is in his work. A bad preacher will get admiration and 
a hearing with this point in his favor, where a man of thre^ 
times his acquirements will only find indifference and coldness. 
Is any man more remarkable than our artist for telling the 
truth after his own manner ? Hogarth's honesty of purpose 
was as conspicuous in an earlier time, and we fancy that Gilray 
would have been far more successful and more powerful but 
for that unhappy bribe, which turned the whole course of his 
humor into an unnatural channel. Cruikshank would not for 
any bribe say what he did not think, or lend his aid to sneer 
down anything meritorious, or to praise any thing or person 
that deserved censure. When he levelled his wit against the 
Regent, and did his very prettiest for the Princess, he most 
certainly believed, along with the great body ol the people 
whom he represents, that the Princess was the most spotless, 
pure-mannered darling of a Princess that ever married a heart- 
less debauchee of a Prince Royal. Did not millions believe 
with him, and noble and learned lords take their oaths to her 
Royal Highness's innocence.'' Cruikshank would not stand 
by and see a woman ill-used, and so struck in for her rescue, 
he and the people belaboring with all their might the party 
who were making the attack, and determining, from pure sym- 
pathy and indignation, that the woman must be innocent be- 
cause her husband treated her so foully. 

To be sure we have never heard so much from Mr. Cruik- 
shank's own lips, but any man who will examine these old 
drawings, which first made him famous, will see what an hon- 
est, hearty hatred the champion of woman has for all who 
abuse her, and will admire the energy with which he flings his 
wood-blocks at all who side against her. Canning, Castle- 
reagh, Bexley, Sidmouth, he is at them, one and all ; and as 
for the Prince, up to what a whipping-post of ridicule did he 
tie that unfortunate old man ! And do not let squeamish 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 603 

Tories cry out about disloyalty ; if the crown does wrong, the 
crown must be corrected by the nation, out of respect, of 
course, for the crown. In those days, and by those people who 
so bitterly attacked the son, no word was ever breathed against 
the father, simply because he was a good husband, and a sober, 
thrifty, pious, orderly man. 

This attack upon the Prince Regent we believe to have 
been Mr, Cruikshank's only effort as a party politician. Some 
early manifestoes against Napoleon we find, it is true, done in 
the regular John Bull style, with the Gilray model for the little 
upstart Corsican : but as soon as the Emperor had yielded to 
stern fortune our artist's heart relented (as Beranger's did on 
the other side of the water), and many of our reader will doubt- 
less recollect a fine drawing of " Louis XVIII. trying on Na- 
poleon's boots," which did not certainly fit the gouty son of 
Saint Louis. Such satirical hits as these, however, must not be 
considered as political, or as anything more that the expression 
of the artist's national British idea of Frenchmen. 

It must be confessed that for that great nation Mr. Cruik- 
shank entertains a considerable contempt. Let the reader ex- 
amine the " Life in Paris," or the five-hundred designs in which 
Frenchmen are introduced, and he will find them almost invari- 
ably thin, with ludicrous spindle-shanks, pigtails, outstretched 
hands, shrugging shoulders, and queer hair and mustaches. 
He has the British idea of a Frenchman ; and if he does not 
believe that the inhabitants of France are for the most part 
dancing-masters and barbers, yet takes care not to depict such 
in preference, and would not speak too well of them. It is 
curious how these traditions endure. In France, at the pres- 
ent moment, the Englishman on the stage is the caricatured 
Englishman at the time of the war, with a shock red head, a 
long white coat, and invariable gaiters. Those who wish to 
study this subject should peruse Monsieur Paul de Kock's 
histories of " Lord Boulingrog " and " Lady Crockmilove." On 
the other hand, the old emigre hzs taken his station amongst 
us, and we doubt if a good British gallery would understand 
that such and such a character was a Frenchman unless he 
appeared in the ancient traditional costume. 

A curious book, called " Life in Paris," published in 1822, 
contains a number of the artist's plates in the aquatint style ; 
and though we believe he has never been in that capital, the de- 
signs have a great deal of life in them, and pass muster very well, 
A villanous race of shoulder-shrugging mortals are his French- 
men indeed. And the heroes of the tale, a certain Mr, Dick 



6o4 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain O'Shuffleton, are made 
to show the true British superiority, on every occasion when 
Britons and French are brought together. This book was one 
among the many that tlie designer's genius has caused to be 
popular ; the plates are not carefully executed, but, being col- 
ored, have a pleasant, lively look. The same style was adopted 
in the once famous book called " Tom and Jerry, or Life in 
London," which must have a word of notice here, for, although 
by no means Mr. Cruikshank's best work, his reputation was 
extraordinarily raised by it. Tom and Jerry were as popular 
twenty years since as Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller now are \ 
and often have we wished, while reading the biographies of the 
latter celebrated personages, that they had been described as 
well by Mr. Cruikshank's pencil as by Mr. Dickens's pen. 

As for Tom and Jerry, to show the mutability of human 
affairs and the evanescent nature of reputation, we have 
been to the British Museum and no less than five circulating 
libraries in quest of the book, and " Life in London," alas, is 
not to be found at any one of them. We can only, therefore, 
speak of the work from recollection, but have still a very clear 
remembrance of the leather-gaiters of Jerry Hawthorn, the 
green spectacles of Logic, and the hooked nose of Corinthian 
Tom. They were the schoolboy's delight ; and in the days 
when the work appeared we firmly believed the three heroes 
above named to be types of the most elegant, fashionable young 
fellows the town afforded, and thought their occupations and 
amusements were those of all high-bred English gentlemen. 
Tom knocking down the watchman at Temple Bar ; Tom and 
Jerry dancing at Almack's ; or flirting in the saloon at the 
theatre ; at the night-houses, after the play ; at Tom Cribb's, 
examining the silver cup then in the possession of that cham- 
pion ; at the chambers of Bob Logic, who, seated at a cabinet 
piano, plays a waltz to which Corinthian Torn and Kate are 
dancing ; ambling gallantly in Rotten Row ; or examining the 
poor fellow at Newgate who was having his chains knocked oiT 
before hanging : all these scenes remain indelibly engraved 
upon the mind, and so far we are independent of all the circu- 
lating libraries in London. 

As to the literary contents of the book, they have passed 
sheer away. It was, most likely, not particularly refined ; 
nay, the chances are that it was absolutely vulgar. But it must 
have had some merit of its own, that is clear ; it must have 
given striking descriptions of life in some part or other of Lon- 
don, for all London read it, and went to see it in its dramatic 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 



605 



shape. The artist, it is said, wished to close the career of the 
three heroes by bringing them all to ruin, but the writer, or pub- 
lishers, would not allow any such melancholy subjects to dash 
the merriment of the public, and we believe Tom, Jerry, and 
Logic, were married off at the end of the tale, as if they had 
been the most moral personages in the world. There is some 
goodness in this pity, which authors and the public are disposed 
to show towards certain agreeable, disreputable characters of 
romance. Who would mar the prospects of honest Roderick 
Random, or Charles Surface, or Tom Jones ? only a very stern 
moralist indeed. And in regard of Jerry Hawthorn and that 
hero without a surname, Corinthian Tom, Mr. Cruikshank, we 
make little doubt, was glad in his heart that he was not allowed 
to have his own way. 

Soon after the "Tom and Jerfy " and the "Life in Paris," 
Mr. Cruikshank produced a much more elaborate set of prints, 
in a work which was called " Points of Humor." These 
" Points " were selected from various comic works, and did not, 
we believe, extend beyond a couple of numbers, containing 
about a score of co2>per-plates. The collector of humorous 
designs cannot fail to have them in his portfolio, for they con- 
tain some of the very best efforts of Mr.^ Cruikshank 's genius, 
and though not quite so highly labored as some of his later pro- 
ductions, are none the worse, in our opinion, for their compara^ 
tive want of finish. All the effects are perfectly given, and the 
expression is as good as it could be in the most delicate en- 
graving upon steel. The artist's style, too, was then completely 
formed ; and, for our parts, we should say that we preferred 
his manner of 1825 to any other which he has adopted since. 
The first picture, which is called "The Point of Honor," illus- 
trates the old story of the officer who, on being accused of 
cowardice for refusing to fight a duel, came among his brother 
officers and flung a lighted grenade down upon the floor, before 
which his comrades fled ignominiously. This design is capital, 
and the outward rush of heroes, walking, trampling, twisting, 
scuffling at the door, is in the best style of the grotesque. You 
see but the back of these gentlemen ; into which, nevertheless, 
the artist has managed to throw an expression of ludicrous 
agony that one could scarcely have expected to find in such a 
part of the human figure. The next plate is not less good. It 
represents a couple who, having been found one night tipsy, 
and lying in the same gutter, were, by a charitable though mis- 
guided gentleman, supposed to be man and wife, and put 
comfortably to bed together. The morning came ; fancy the 



6o6 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

surprise of this interesting pair when they awoke and discovered 
their situation. Fancy the manner, too, in which Cruikshank 
has depicted them, to which words cannot do justice. It is 
needless to state that this fortuitous and temporary union was 
followed by one more lasting and sentimental, and that these 
two worthy persons were married, and lived happily ever after. 

We should like to go through every one of these prints. There 
is the jolly miller, who, returning home at night, calls upon his 
wife to get him a supper, and falls to upon rashers of bacon 
and ale. How he gormandizes, that jolly miller ! rasher after 
rasher, how they pass away frizzling and smoking from the 
gridiron down that immense grinning gulf of a mouth. Poor 
wife ! how she pines and frets, at that untimely hour of mid- 
night to be obliged to fry, fry, fry perpetually, and minister to 
the monster's appetite. And yonder in the clock : what agon- 
ized face is that we see ? By heavens, it is the squire of the 
parish. What business has he there ? Let us not ask. Suffice 
it to say, that he has, in the hurry of the moment, left up stairs 

his br ; his — psha ! a part of his dress, in short, with a 

number of bank-notes in the pockets. Look in the next page, 
and you will see the ferocious, bacon-devouring ruffian of a 
miller is actually causing this garment to be carried through the 
village and cried by the town-crier. And we blush to be obliged 
to say that the demoralized miller never offered to return the 
bank-notes, although he was so mighty scrupulous in endeavor- 
ing to find an owner for the corduroy portfolio in which he had 
found them. 

Passing from this painful subject, we come, we regret to 
state, to a series of prints representing personages not a whit 
more moral. Burns's famous " Jolly Beggars " have all had 
their portraits drawn by Cruikshank. There is the lovely 
" hempen widow," quite as interesting and romantic as the 
famous Mrs. Sheppard, who has at the lamented demise of her 
husband adopted the very same consolation. 

" My curse upon them every one, 

They've hanged my braw John Highlandman; 

* * * * * 

And now a widow I must mourn 

Departed joys that ne'er return ; 

No comfort but a hearty can 

When I think on John Highlandman." 

Sweet " raucle carlin," she has none of the sentimentality of 
the English highwaymen's lady ; but being wooed by a tinker 
and 

" A pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle 
Wha us'd to trystes and fairs to driddle," 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 607 

prefers the practical to the merely musical man. The tinker 
sings with a noble candor, worthy of a fellow of his strength of 
body and station in life — 

" My bonnie lass, I work in brass, 

A tinker is my station ; 
I've travell'd round all Christian ground 

In this my occupation. 
I've ta'en the gold, I've been enroU'd 

In many a noble squadron ; 
But vain they search' d when oft I march'd 

To go an' clout the caudron." 

It was his ruling passion. What was military glory to him, for- 
sooth ? He had the greatest contempt for it, and loved freedom 
and his copper kettle a thousand times better — a kind of hard- 
ware Diogenes. Of fiddling he has no better opinion. The 
picture represents the " sturdy caird " taking " poor gut- 
scraper" by the beard, — drawing his "roosty rapier," and 
swearing to " speet him like a pliver " unless he would relin- 
quish the bonnie lassie forever — 

" Wi' ghastly ee, poor tweedle-dee 
Upon his hunkers bended, 
An' pray'd for grace vvi' ruefu' face. 
An' so the quarrel ended." 

Hark how the tinker apostrophizes the violinist, stating to the 
widow at the same time the advantages which she might expect 
from an alliance with himself : — 

" Despise that shrimp, that withered imp, 
Wi' a' his noise and caperin' : 
And take a share with those that bear 
The budget and the apron ! 

'And by that stowp, my faith an' houpe, 

An' by that dear Kiibaigie ! 
If e'er ye want, or meet wi' scant, 
May I ne'er weet my craigie." 

Cruikshank's caird is a noble creature ; his face and figure 
show him to be fully capable of doing and saying all that is 
above written of him. 

In the second part, the old tale of " The Three Hunchbacked 
Fiddlers " is illustrated with equal felicity. The famous classical 
dinners and duel in " Peregrine Pickle " are also excellent in 
their way ; and the connoisseur of prints and etchings may see 
in the latter plate, and in another in this volume, how great the 
artist's mechanical skill is as an etcher. The distant view of the 
city in the duel, and of a market-place in " The Quack Doctor," 
are delightful specimens of the artist's skill in depicting build- 
ings and backgrounds. They are touched with a grace, truth, 



6o8 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

and dexterity of workmanship that leave nothing to desire. We 
have before mentioned the man with the mouth, which appears 
in this number emblematical of gout and indigestion, in which 
the artist has shown all the fancy of Callot. Little demons, 
with long saws for noses, are making dreadful incisions into the 
toes of the unhappy sufferer ; some are bringing pans of hot 
coals to keep the wounded member warm ; a huge, solemn 
nightmare sits on the invalid's chest, staring solemnly into his 
eyes ; a monster, with a pair of drumsticks, is banging a 
devil's tattoo on his forehead ; and a pair of imps are nailing 
great tenpenny nails into his hands to make his happiness 
complete. 

The late Mr. Clark's excellent work, " Three Courses and a 
Dessert," was published at a time when the rage for comic 
stories was not so great as it since has been, and Messrs. Clark 
and Cruikshank only sold their hundreds where Messrs. Dickens 
and Phiz dispose of their thousands. But if our recommenda- 
tion can in any way influence the reader, we would enjoin him 
to have a copy of the " Three Courses," that contains some of 
the best designs of our artist, and some of the most amusing 
tales in our language. The invention of the pictures, for which 
Mr. Clark takes credit to himself, says a great deal for his wit 
and fancy. Can we, for instance, praise too highly the man 
who invented that wonderful oyster ? 

Examine him well ; his beard, his pearl, his little round 
stomach, and his sweet smile. Only oysters know how to 
smile in this way ; cool, gentle, waggish, and yet inexpressibly 
innocent and winning. Dando himself must have allowed such 
an artless native to go free, and consigned him to the glassy, 
cool, translucent wave again. 

In writing upon such subjects as these with which we have 
been furnished, it can hardly be expected that we should fol- 
low any fixed plan and order — we must therefore take such ad- 
vantage as we may, and seize upon our subject when and 
wherever we can lay hold of him. 

For Jews, sailors, Irishmen, Hessian boots, little boys, 
beadles, policemen, tall life-guardsmen, charity children, 
pumps, dustmen, very short pantaloons, dandies in spectacles, 
and ladies with aquiline noses, remarkably taper waists, and 
wonderfully long ringlets, Mr. Cruikshank has a special predi- 
lection. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with amazing 
gusto; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," 
and the immortal Fagin of " Oliver Twist." Whereabouts lies 
the comic vis in these persons and things ? Why should a 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 



609 



beadle be comic, and his opposite a charity boy ? Why should 
a tall life-guaiTlsman have something in him essentially absurd ? 
Why are short breeches more ridiculous than long -' What is 
there particularly jocose about a pump, and wherefore does a 
long nose always provoke the beholder to laughter ? These 
points may be metaphysically elucidated by those who list. It 
is probable that Mr. Cruikshank could not give an accurate 
definition of that which is ridiculous in these objects, but his 
instinct has told him that fun lurks in them, and cold must be 
the heart that can pass by the pantaloons of his charity boys, 
the Hessian boots of his dandies, and the fan-tail hats of his 
dustmen, without respectful wonder. 

He has made a complete little gallery of dustmen. There 
is, in the first place, the professional dustman, who, having in 
the enthusiastic exercise of his delightful trade, laid hands 
upon property not strictly his own, is pursued, we presume, by 
the right owner, from whom he flies as fast as his crooked 
shanks will carry him. 

What a curious picture it is — the horrid rickety houses in 
some dingy suburb of London, the grinning cobbler, the 
smothered butcher, the very trees which are covered with dust 
— it is fine to look at the different expressions of the two in- 
teresting fugitives. The fiery charioteer who belabors the poor 
donkey has still a glance for his brother on foot, on whom 
punishment is about to descend. And not a little curious is it 
to think of the creative power of the man who has arranged 
this little tale of low life. How logically it is conducted, how 
cleverly each one of the accessories is made to contribute to 
the effect of the whole. What a deal of thought and humor 
has the artist expended on this little block of wood ; a large 
picture might have been painted out of the very same materials, 
which Mr. Cruikshank, out of his wondrous fund of merri- 
ment and observation, can afford to throw away upon a draw- 
ing not two inches long. From the practical dustmen we pass 
to those purely poetical. There are three of them who rise on 
clouds of their own raising, the very genii of the sack and 
shovel. 

Is there no one to write a sonnet to these ? — and yet a whole 
poem was written about Peter Bell the Wagoner, a character 
by no means so poetic. 

And lastly, we have the dustman in love : the honest fellow 
having seen a young beauty stepping out of a gin shop on a Sun- 
day morning, is pressing eagerly his suit. 

Gin has furnished many subjects to Mr. Cruikshank, who 

39 



6io 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 



labors in his own sound and hearty way to teach his country- 
men the dangers of that drink. In the " Sketch-Book " is a 
plate upon the subject, remarkable for fancy and beauty of 
design ; it is called the " Gin Juggernaut," and represents a 
hideous moving palace, with a reeking still at the roof and vast 
gin-barrels for wheels, under which unhappy millions are 
crushed to death. An immense black cloud of desolation 
covers over the country through which the gni monster has 
passed, dimly looming through the darkness whereof you see 
an agreeable prospect of gibbets with men dangling, burnt 
houses, Src. The vast cloud comes sweeping on in the wake 
of this horrible body-crusher ; and you see, by way of contrast, 
a distant, smiling, sunshiny tract of old English country, where 
gin as j''et is not known. The allegory is as good, as earnest, 
and as fanciful as one of John Bunyan's, and we have often 
fancied there was a similarity between the men. 

The reader will examine the work called " My Sketch- 
Book " with not a little amusement, and may gather from it, as 
we fancy, a good deal of information regarding the character 
of the individual man, George Cruikshank : what points strike 
his eye as a painter ; what move his anger or admiration as 
a moralist ; what classes he seems most especially disposed 
to observe, and what to ridicule. There are quacks of all 
kinds, to whom he has a mortal hatred ; quack dandies who 
assume under his pencil, perhaps in his eye, the most grotesque 
appearance possible — their hats grow larger, their legs infinitely 
more crooked and lean ; the tassels of their canes swell out to 
a most preposterous size ; the tails of their coats dwindle away, 
and finish where coat-tails generally begin. Let us lay a wager 
that Cruikshank, a man of the people if ever there was one, 
heartily hates and depises these supercilious, swaggering young 
gentlemen ; and his contempt is not a whit the less laudable 
because there may be tant soit pen of prejudice in it. It is 
right and wholesome to scorn dandies, as Nelson said it was to 
hate Frenchmen ; in which sentiment (as we have before said) 
George Cruikshank undoubtedly shares. In the " Sunday in 
London," * Monsieur the Chef is instructing a kitchen-maid 



* The following lines — ever fresh — by the author of " Headlong Hall," published yeara 
ago in the Globe and Traveller, are an excellent comment on several of the cuts from the 
** Sunday in London : " — 



" The poor man's sins are glaring ; 
In the face of ghostly warning 

He is cau'iht in the fact 

Of an overt act, 
Buying greens on Sunday morning. 



' The rich mar's sins are hidden 
In the pomp of wealth and station, 
And escape the sight 
Of the children of light, 
Who are wise in their generation. 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 



6n 



how to compound some rascally French kickshaw or the other 
■ — a pretty scoundrel truly ! with what an air he wears that 
nightcap of his, and shrugs his lank shoulders, and chatters, 
and ogles, and grins : they are all the same, these mounseers ; 
there are other two fellows — morbletc ! one is putting his dirty 
fingers into the saucepan ; there are frogs cooking in it, no 
doubt ; and just over some other dish of abomination, another 
dirty rascal is taking snuff ! Never mind, the sauce won't be 
hurt by a few ingredients more or less. Three such fellows as 
these are not worth one Englishman, that's clear. There is 
one in the very midst of them, the great burly fellow with the 
beef : he could beat all three in five minutes. We cannot be 
certain that such was the process going on in Mr. Cruikshank's 
mind when he made the design ; but some feelings of the sort 
were no doubt entertained by him. 

Against dandy footmen he is particularly severe. He hates 
idlers," pretenders, boasters, and punishes these fellows as best 
he may. Who does not recollect the famous picture, " What 
is Taxes, Thomas ? " What is taxes indeed ; well may that 
vast, over-fed, lounging flunkey ask the question of his associate 
Thomas : and yet not well, for all that Thomas says in reply 
is, " / dofi't hiow." " O beati plushicolce" what a charming 
state of ignorance is yours ! In the " Sketch-Book " many foot- 
men make their appearance : one is a huge fat Hercules of a 
Portman Square porter, who calmly surveys another poor fel- 
low, a porter likewise, but out of liver}', who comes staggering 
forward with a box that Hercules might lift with his little finger. 
Will Hercules do so .'' not he. The giant can carry nothing 
heavier than a cocked-hat note on a silver tray, and his labors 
are to walk from his sentry-box to the door, and from the door 
back to his sentry-box, and to read the Sunday paper, and to 
poke the hall fire twice or thrice, and to make five meals a day. 
Such a fellow does Cruikshank hate and scorn worse even than 
a Frenchman. 



' The rich man has a kitchen, 
And cooks to dress his dinner ; 
The poor who would roast, 
To the baker's must post, 
And thus becomes a sinner. 



' The rich man's painted windows 
Hide the concert's of the quality ; 
The poor can but share 
A crack'd fiddle in the air, 
Which offends all sound morality. 



" The rich man has a cellai, 
And a ready butler by him ; 
The poor must steer 
For his pint of beer 
Where the saint can't choose but spy hinw 



The rich man is invisible 

In the crowd of his gay society 

But the poor man's delight 

Is a sore in the sight 
And a stench in the nose of piety?" 



6i2 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

The man's master, too, comes in for no small share of our 
artist's wrath. There is a company of them at church, who 
humbly designate themselves " miserable sinners ! " Miserable 
sinners indeed ! Oh, what floods of turtle-soup, what tons of 
turbot and lobster-sauce must have been sacrificed to make 
those sinners properly miserable. My lady with the ermine 
tippet and draggling feather, can we not see that she lives in 
Portland Place, and is the wife of an East India Director ? She 
has been to the Opera over-night (indeed her husband, on her 
right, with his fat hand dangling over the pew-door, is at this 
minute thinking of Mademoiselle Leocadie, whom he saw be- 
hind the scenes) — she has been at the Opera over-night, which 
with a trifle of supper afterwards — a white-and-brown soup, a 
lobster-salad, some woodcocks, and a little champagne — sent 
her to bed quite comfortable. At half-past eight her maid 
brings her chocolate in bed, at ten she has fresh eggs and 
muffins, with, perhaps, a half-hundred of prawns for breakfast, 
and so can get over the day and the sermon till lunch-time 
pretty well. What an odor of musk and bergamot exhales 
from the pew ! — how it is wadded, and stuffed, and spangled 
over with brass nails ! what hassocks are there for those who 
are not too fat to kneel ! what a flustering and flapping of gilt 
prayer-books ; and what a pious whirring of bible leaves one 
hears all over the church, as the doctor blandly gives out the 
text ! To be miserable at this rate you must, at the very least, 
have four thousand a year : and many persons are there so en- 
amored of grief and sin, that they would willingly take the risk 
of the misery to have a life-interest in the consols that accom- 
pany it, quite careless about consequences, and skeptical as to 
the notion that a day is at hand when you must ixAiiX your share 
of the bargain. 

Our artist loves to joke at a soldier ; in whose livery there 
appears to him to be something almost as ridiculous as in the 
uniform of the gentleman of the shoulder-knot. Tall life- 
guardsmen and fierce grenadiers figure in many of his designs, 
and almost always in a ridiculous way„ Here again we have 
the honest popular English feeling which jeers at pomp or pre- 
tension of all kinds, and is especially jealous of all display of 
military authority. " Raw Recruit," " ditto dressed," ditto 
" served up," as we see them in the " Sketch-Book," are so 
many satires upon the army : Hodge with his ribbons flaunting 
in his hat, or with red coat and musket, drilled stiff and pom- 
pous, or at last, minus leg and arm, tottering about on crutches, 
does not fill our English artist with the enthusiasm that 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANIC. 613 

follows the soldier in every other part of Europe. Jean- 
jean, the conscript in France, is laughed at to be sure, but then 
it is because he is a bad soldier , when he comes to have a huge 
pair of mustaches and the croix-iV hoinieur to brillcr on his 
poitrine cicatrisec, Jeanjean becomes a member of a class that is 
more respected than any other in the French nation. The vet- 
eran soldier inspires our people with no such awe — we hold 
that democratic weapon the fist in much more honor than sabre 
and bayonet, and laugh at a man tricked out in scarlet and 
pipe-clay. 

That regiment of heroes is " marching to divine service," 
to the tune of the " British Grenadiers." There they march 
in state, and a pretty contempt our artist shows for all their 
gimcracks and trumpery. He has drawn a perfectly English 
scene — the little blackguard boys are playing pranks round 
about the men, and shouting, '* Heads up, soldier," " Eyes 
right, lobster," as little British urchins will do. Did one ever 
hear the like sentiments expressed in France ? Shade of Na- 
poleon, we insult you by asking the question. In England, 
however, see how different the case is : and designedly or un- 
designedly, the artist has opened to us a piece of his mind. In 
the crowd the only person who admires the soldiers is the poor 
idiot, whose pocket a rogue is picking. There is another pic- 
ture, in which the sentiment is much the same, only, as in the 
former drawing we see Englishmen laughing at the troops of 
the line, here are Irishmen giggling at the militia. 

We have said that our artist has a great love for the droll- 
eries of the Green Island. Would any one doubt what was 
the country of the merry fellows depicted in his group of 
Paddies .'' 

" Place me amid O'Rourkes, O'Tooles, 
The ragsjted royal race (if Tara ; 
Or place me where Dick Martin rules 
The pathless wilds of Connemara." 

We know not if Mr. Cruikshank has ever had any such good 
luck as to see the Irish in Ireland itself, but he certainly has 
obtained a knowledge of their looks, as if the country had been 
all his life familiar to him. Could Mr. O'Connell himself desire 
anything more national than the scene of a drunken row, or 
could Father Mathew have a better text to preach upon ? 
There is not a broken nose in the room that is not thoroughly 
Irish. 

' We have then a couple of compositions treated in a graver 
manner, as characteristic too as the other. We call attention 



6i4 CRITICAL REVIEWS 

to the comical look of poor Teague, who has been pursued and 
beaten by the witch's stick, in order to point out also the singu- 
lar neatness of the workmanship, and the pretty fanciful little 
glimpse of landscape that the artist has introduced in the back- 
ground. Mr. Cruikshank has a fine eye for such homely land- 
scapes, and renders them with great delicacy and taste. Old 
villages, farm-yards, groups of stacks, queer chimneys, churches, 
gable-ended cottages, Elizabethan mansion-houses, and other 
old English scenes, he depicts with evident enthusiasm. 

Famous books in their day were Cruikshank's "John Gil- 
pin " and " Epping Hunt; " for though our artist does not draw 
horses very scientifically, — to use a phrase of the atelier, — he 
feels them very keenly ; and his queer animals, after one is 
used to them, answer quite as well as better. Neither is he 
very happy in trees, and such rustical produce ; or rather, we 
should say, he is very original, his trees being decidedly of his 
own make and composition, not imitated from any master. 

But what then 1 Can a man be supposed to imitate every- 
thing ? We know what the noblest study of mankind is, and 
to this Mr. Cruikshank has confined himself. That postilion 
with the people in the broken-down chaise roaring after him is 
as deaf as the post by which he passes. Suppose all the ac- 
cessories were away, could not one swear that the man was 
stone-deaf, beyond the reach of trumpet ? What is the pecu- 
liar character in a deaf man's physiognomy ? — can any person 
define it satisfactorily in words ? — not in pages ; and Mr. Cruik- 
shank has expressed it on a piece of paper not so big as the 
tenth part of your thumb-nail. The horses of John Gilpin are 
much more of the equestrian order ; and as here the artist has 
only his favorite suburban buildings to draw, not a word is to 
be said against his design. The inn and old buildings are 
charmingly designed, and nothing can be more prettily or play- 
fully touched. 

"At Edmonton his loving wife 
From the balcony spied 
Her tender husband, wond'ring much 
To see how he did ride. 

" ' Stop, stop, John Gilpin ! Here's the house t ' 
They all at once did cry ; 
'The dinner waits, and we are tired — ' 
Said Gilpin — ' So am I ! ' 

" Six gentlemen upon the road 
Thus seeing Gilpin fly, 
With post-boy scamp' ring in the rear. 
They raised the hue and cry : — 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 615 

" Stop thief! stop thief! — a highway manl 
Not one of them was mute ", 
And all and each that passed that way 
Did join in the pursuit. 

" And now the turnpike gates again 
Flew open in short space ; 
The toll-men thinking, as before, 
That Gilpin rode a race." 

The rush, and shouting, and clatter are excellently depicted 
by the artist ; and we, who have been scoffing at his manner 
of designing animals, must here make a special exception in 
favor of the hens and chickens; each has a different action, 
and is curiously natural. 

Happy are the children of all ages who have such a ballad 
and such pictures as this in store for them ! It is a comfort to 
think that wood-cuts never wear out, and that the book still 
may be had for a shilling, for those who can command that sum 
of money. 

In the *' Epping Hunt," which we owe to the facetious pen 
of Mr. Hood, our artist had not been so successful. There is 
here too much horsemanship and not enough incident for him ; 
but the portrait of Roundings the huntsman is an excellent 
sketch, and a couple of the designs contain great humor. The 
first represents the Cockney hero, who, " like a bird, was sing- 
ing out while sitting on a tree." 

And in the second the natural order is reversed. The stag 
having taken heart, is hunting the huntsman, and the Cheapside 
Nimrod is most ignominiously running away. 

The Easter Hunt, we are told, is no more ; and as the 
Quarterly Review recommends the British public to purchase 
Mr. Catlin's pictures, as they form the only record of an inter- 
esting race now rapidly passing away, in like manner we should 
exhort all our friends to purchase Mr. Cruickshank's designs 
of another interesting race, that is run already and for the last 
time. 

Besides these, we must mention, in the line of our duty, the 
notable tragedies of " Tom Thumb " and " Bombastes Furi- 
oso," both of which have appeared with many illustrations by 
Mr, Cruikshank. The " brave army " of Bombastes exhibits 
a terrific display of brutal force, which must shock the sensi- 
bilities of an English Radical. And we can well understand 
the caution of the general, who bids this soldatesque effenere to 
begone, and not to kick up a row. 

Such a troop of lawless ruffians let loose upon a populous 
city would play sad havoc in it ; and we fancy the massacres of 



6i6 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

Birmingham renewed, or at least of Badajoz, which, though not 
quite so dreadful, if we may belie\-e his Grace the Duke of 
Wellington, as the former scenes of slaughter, were neverthe- 
less severe enough : but we must not venture upon any ill- 
timed pleasantries in presence of the disturbed King Arthur 
and the awful ghost of Gaffer Thumb. 

We are thus carried at once into the supernatural, and here 
Ave find Cruilcshank reigning supreme. He has invented in his 
time a little comic pandemonium, peopled with the most droll, 
good-natured fiends possible. We have before us Chamisso's 
" Peter Schlemihl," with Cruikshank's designs translated into 
German, and gaining nothing by the change. The " Kinder 
und Hans-Maerchen " of Grimm are likewise ornamented with 
a frontispiece, copied from that one which appeared to the 
amusing version of the English work. The books on Phrenol- 
ogy and Time have been imitated by the same nation ; and 
even in France, whither reputation travels slower than to any 
country except China, we have seen copies of the works of 
George Cruikshank. 

He in return has complimented the French by illustrating a 
couple of Lives of Napoleon, and the " Life in Paris " before 
mentioned. He has also made designs for Victor Hugo's 
" Hans of Iceland." Strange, wild etchings were those, on a 
strange, mad subject ; not so good in our notion as the designs 
for the German books, the peculiar humor of which latter 
seemed to suit the artist exactly. There is a mixture of the 
awful and the ridiculous in these, which perpetually excites 
and keeps awake the reader's attention ; the German writer 
and the English artist seem to have an entire faith in their sub- 
ject. The reader, no doubt, remembers the awful passage in 
" Peter Schlemihl," where the little gentleman purchases the 
shadow of that hero — " Have the kindness, noble sir, to ex- 
amine and try this bag." " He put his hand into his pocket, 
and drew thence a tolerably large bag of Cordovan leather, to 
which a couple of thongs were fixed. I took it from him, and 
immediately counted out ten gold pieces, and ten more, and 
ten more, and still other ten, whereupon I held out my hand to 
him. Done, said I, it is a bargain ; you shall have my shadow 
for your bag. The bargain was concluded ; he knelt down 
before me, and I saw him with a wonderful neatness take my 
shadow from head to foot, lightly lift it up from the grass, roll 
and fold it up neatly, and at last pocket it. He then rose up, 
bowed to me once more, and walked away again, disappearing 
behind the rose-bushes. I don't know, but I thought I heard 



GEORGE CRUIKSIIANK. 



617 



him laughing a little. I, however, kept fast hold of the bag. 
P^verj'thing around me was bright in the sun, and as yet I gave 
no thought to what I had done." 

This marvellous event, narrated by Peter with such a faith- 
ful, circumstantial detail, is painted by Cruikshank in the most 
wonderful poetic way, with that happy mixture of the real and 
supernatural that makes the narrative so curious, and like 
truth. The sun is shining with the utmost brilliancy in a great 
quiet park or garden ; there is a palace in the background, and 
a statue basking in the sun quite lonely and melancholy ; there 
is a sun-dial, on which is a deep shadow, and in the front stands 
Peter Schlemihl, bag in hand : the old gentleman is down on 
his knees to him, and has just lifted ofif the ground the shadow 
of one leg ; he is going to fold it back neatly, as one does the 
tails of a coat, and will show it, without any creases or crumples, 
along with the other black garments that lie in that immense 
pocket of his. Cruikshank has designed all this as if he had 
a very serious belief in the story ; he laughs, to be sure, but 
one fancies that he is a little frightened in his heart, in spite of 
all his fun and joking. 

The German tales we have mentioned before. " The Prince 
riding on the Fox," " Hans in Luck," " The Fiddler and his 
Goose," " Heads off," are all drawings which, albeit not be- 
fore us now, nor seen for ten years, remain indelibly fixed on 
the memory. " Hcisst dii etwa Riimpelstihchen 2 " There sits 
the Queen on her throne, surrounded by grinning beef-eaters, 
and little Rumpelstiltskin stamps his foot through the floor in 
the excess of his tremendous despair. In one of these Ger- 
man tales, if we remember rightly, there is an account of a little 
orphan who is carried away by a pitying fairy for a term of 
seven years, and passing that period of sweet apprenticeship 
among the imps and sprites of fairy-land. Has our artist 
been among the same company, and brought back their por- 
traits in his sketch-book? He is the only designer fairy-land 
has had. Callot's imps, for all their strangeness, are only of 
the earth earthy. Fuseli's fairies belong to the infernal re- 
gions ; they are monstrous, lurid, and hideously melancholy. 
Mr Cruikshank alone has had a true insight into the character 
of the "little people." They are something like men and wo- 
men, and yet not flesh and blood ; they are laughing and mis- 
chievous, but why we know not. Mr. Cruikshank, however, 
has had some dream or the other, or else a natural mysterious 
instinct (as the Seherinn of Prevorst had for beholding ghosts), 
or else some preternatural fairy revelation, which has made 



6i8 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

him acquainted with the looks and ways of the fantastical sub- 
jects of Oberon and Titania. 

We have, unfortunately, no fairy portraits ; but, on the 
other hand, can descend lower than fai:ry-land, and have seen 
6ome fine specimens of devils. One has already been raised, 
and the reader has seen him tempting a fat Dutch burgomaster 
in an ancient gloomy market-place, such as George Cruik- 
shank can draw as well as Mr. Prout, Mr. Nash, or any man 
living. There is our friend once more ; our friend the bur- 
gomaster, in a highly excited state, and running as hard as 
his great legs will carry him, with our mutual enemy at his tail. 

What are the bets ; will that long-legged bond-holder of a 
devil come up with the honest Dutchman? It serves him 
right ; why did he put his name to stamped paper ? And yet 
we should not wonder if some lucky chance should turn up in 
the burgomaster's favor, and his infernal creditor lose his labor ; 
for one so proverbially cunning as yonder tall individual with 
the saucer eyes, it must be confessed that he has been very 
often outwitted. 

There is, for instance, the case of " The Gentleman in 
Black," which has been illustrated by our artist. A young 
French gentleman, by name M. Desonge, who having ex- 
pended his patrimony in a variety of tjiverns and gaming-houses, 
was one day pondering upon the exhausted state of his finances, 
and utterly at a loss to think how he should provide means for 
future support, exclaimed, very naturally, " What the devil shall 
I do ? " He had no sooner spoken than a Gentleman in Black 
made his appearance, whose authentic portrait Mr. Cruikshank 
has had the honor to paint. This gentleman produced a black- 
edged book out of a black bag, some black-edged papers tied 
up with black crape, and sitting down familiarly opposite M. 
Desonge, began conversing with him on the state of his affairs. 

It is needless to state what was the result of the interview. 
M. Desonge was induced by the gentleman to sign his name to 
one of the black-edged papers, and found himself at the close 
of the conversation to be possessed of an unlimited command 
of capital. This arrangement completed, the Gentleman in 
Black posted (in an extraordinary rapid manner) from Paris to 
London, there found a young English merchant in exactly the 
same situation in which M. Desonge had been, and concluded 
a bargain with the Briton of exactly the same nature. 

The book goes on to relate how these young men spent the 
money so miraculously handed over to them, and how both, 
when the period drew near that was to witness the performance 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 



619 



of tkeir part of the bargain, grew melancholy, wretched, nay, so 
absolutely dishonorable as to seek for every means of breaking 
through their agreement. The Englishman living in a country 
where the lawyers are more astute than any other lawyers m 
the world, took the advice of a Mr. Bagsby, of Lyon's Inn; 
whose name, as we cannot find it in the " Law List," we presume 
to be fictitious. Who could it be that was a match for the 

devil ? Lord very likely ; we shall not give his name, but 

let every reader of this Review fill up the blank according to 
his own fancy, and on comparing it with the copy purchased by 
his neighbors, he will find that fifteen out of twenty have writ- 
ten down the same honored name. 

Well, the Gentleman in Black was anxious for the fulfilment 
of his bond. The parties met at Mr. Bagsby's chambers to 
consult, the Black Gentleman foolishly thinking that he could 
act as his own counsel, and fearing no attorney alive. But mark 
the superiority of British law, and see how the black pettifog- 
ger was defeated. 

Mr. Bagsby simply stated that he would take the case into 
Chancery, and his antagonist, utterly humiliated and defeated, 
refused to move a step farther in the matter. 

And now the French gentleman, M. Desonge, hearing of his 
friend's escape, became anxious to be free from his own rash 
engagements. He employed the same counsel who had been 
successful in the former instance, but the Gentleman in Black 
was a great deal wiser by this time, and whether M. Desonge 
escaped, or whether he is now in that extensive place which is 
paved with good intentions, we shall not say. Those who are 
anxious to know had better purchase the book wherein all these 
interesting matters are duly set down. There is one more 
diabolical picture in our budget, engraved by Mr. Thompson, 
the same dexterous artist who has rendered the former diab- 
kries so well. 

We may mention Mr, Thompson's name as among the first 
of the engravers to whom Cruikshank's designs have been en- 
trusted ; and next to him (if we may be allowed to make such 
arbitrary distinctions) we may place Mr. Williams ; and the 
reader is not possibly aware of the immense difficulties to be 
overcome in the rendering of these little sketches, which, traced 
by the designer in a few hours, require weeks' labor from the 
engraver. Mr. Cruikshank has not been educated in the regular 
schools of drawing (very luckily for him, as we think), and con- 
sequently has had to make a manner for himself, which is quite 
unlike that of any other draftsman. There is nothing in the 



62 o CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

least mechanical about it ; to produce his peculiar effects he 
uses his own particular lines, which are queer, free, fantastical, 
and must be followed in all their infinite twists and vagaries by 
the careful tool of the engraver. Those three lovely heads, for 
instance, imagined out of the rinds of lemons, are worth exam- 
ining, not so much for the jovial humor and wonderful variety 
of feature exhibited in these darling countenances as for the 
engraver's part of the work. See the infinite delicate cross- 
lines and hatchings which he is obliged to render ; let him go, 
not a hair's breadth, but the hundredth part of a hair's breadth, 
beyond the given line, and i\\q. feeling of it is ruined. He re- 
ceives these little dots and specks, and fantastical quirks of the 
pencil, and cuts away with a little knife round each, not too 
much nor too little. Antonio's pound of flesh did not puzzle 
the Jew so much ; and so well does the engraver succeed at 
last, that we never remember to have met with a single artist 
who did not vow that the wood-cutter had utterly ruined his 
design. 

Of Messrs. Thompson and Williams we have spoken as the 
first engravers in point of rank ; however, the regulations of 
professional precedence are certainly very difficult, and the 
rest of their brethren we shall not endeavor to class. Why 
should the artists who executed the cuts of the admirable 
" Three Courses " yield \\\q pas to any one ? 

There, for instance, is any engraving by Mr. Landells, 
nearly as good in our opinion as the very best wood-cut that 
ever was made after Cruikshank, and curiously happy in ren- 
dering the artist's peculiar manner : this cut does not come 
from the facetious publications which we have consulted ; but 
is a contribution by Mr. Cruikshank to an elaborate and 
splendid botanical work upon the Orchidacece of Mexico, by 
Mr. Bateman. M. Bateman despatched some extremely choice 
roots of this valuable plant to a friend in England, who, on the 
arrival of the case, consigned it to his gardener to unpack. 
A great deal of anxiety with regard to the contents was 
manifested by all concerned, but on the lid of the box being 
removed, there issued from it three or four fine specimens of 
the enormous Blatta beetle that had been preying upon the 
plants during the voyage ; against these the gardeners, the 
grooms, the porters, and the porters' children, issued forth in 
arms, and this scene the artist has immortalized. 

We have spoken of the admirable way in which Mr, Cruik- 
shank has depicted Irish character and Cockney character ; 
English country character is quite as faithfully delineated in 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 621 

the person of the stout porteress and her children, and of the 
" Chawbacon " with the shovel, on whose face is written "Zum- 
merzetsheer." Chawbacon appears in another plate, or else 
Chawbacon's brother. He has come up to Lunnan, and is 
looking about him at raaces. 

How distinct are these rustics from those whom we have 
just been examining ! They hang about the purlieus of the 
metropolis : Brook Green, Epsom, Greenwich, Ascot, Good- 
wood, are their haunts. They visit London professionally once 
a year, and that is at the time of Bartholomew fair. How one 
may speculate upon the different degrees of rascality, as ex- 
hibited in each face of the thhnblerigging trio, and from little 
histories for these worthies, charming Newgate romances, such 
as have been of late the fashion ! Is any man so blind that he 
cannot see the exact face that is writhing under the thimble- 
rigged hero's hat ? Like Timanthes of old, our artist ex- 
presses great passions without the aid of the human counte- 
nance. There is another specimen — a street row of inebriated 
bottles. Is there any need of having a face after this ? " Come 
on ! " says Claret-bottle, a dashing, genteel fellow, with his hat 
on one ear — " Come on ! has any man a mind to tap me ? " 
Claret-bottle is a little screwed (as one may see by his legs), 
but full of gayety and courage ; not so that stout, apoplectic 
Bottle-of-rum, who has staggered against the wall, and has his 
hand upon his liver : the fellow hurts himself with smoking, 
that is clear, and is as sick as sick can be. See, Port is making 
away from the storm, and Double X is as flat as ditch-water. 
Against these, awful in their white robes, the sober watchmen 
come. 

Our artist then can cover up faces, and yet show them quite 
clearly, as in the thimblerig group ; or he can do without faces 
altogether ; or he can, at a pinch, provide a countenance for a 
gentleman out of any given object — a beautiful Irish physi- 
ognomy being moulded upon a keg of whiskey ; and a jolly 
English countenance .frothing out of a pot of ale (with the 
spirit of brav^e Toby Philpot come back to reanimate his clay); 
while in a fungus may be recognized the physiognomy of a 
mushroom peer. Finally, if he is at a loss, he can make a 
living head, body, and legs out of steel or tortoise-shell, as in 
the case of the vivacious pair of spectacles that are jockeying 
the nose of Caddy Cuddle. 

Of late years Mr. Cruikshank has busied himself very 
much with steel engraving, and the consequences of that 
lucky invention have been, that his plates are now sold by 



622 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

thousands, where they could only be produced by hundreds be- 
fore. He has made many a bookseller's and author's fortune 
(we trust that in so doing he may not have neglected his own). 
Twelve admirable plates, furnished yearly to that facetious 
little publication, the Comic Almanac, have gained for it a sale, 
as we hear, of nearly twenty thousand copies. The idea of 
the work was novel ; there was, in the first number especially, 
a great deal of comic power, and Cruikshank's designs were so 
admirable that the Almanac at once became a vast favorite 
with the public, and has so remained ever since. 

Besides the twelve plates, this almanac contains a prophetic 
wood-cut, accompanying an awful Blarneyhum Astrologicum 
that appears in this and other almanacs. There is one that 
hints in pretty clear terms that with the Reform of Municipal 
Corporations the ruin of the great Lord Mayor of London is 
at hand. His lordship is meekly gomg to dine at an eight- 
penny ordinary, — his giants in pawn, his men in armor dwin- 
dled to " one poor knight," his carriage to be sold, his stalwart 
aldermen vanished, his sheriffs, alas ! and alas ! in jail ! An- 
other design shows that Rigdum, if a true, is also a moral and 
instructive prophet. John Bull is asleep, or rather in a vision; 
the cunning demon. Speculation, blowing a thousand bright 
bubbles about him. Meanwhile the rooks are busy at his fob, 
a knave has cut a cruel hole in his pocket, a rattlesnake has 
coiled safe round his feet, and will in a trice swallow Bull, chair, 
money and all ; the rats are at his corn-bags (as if, poor devil, 
he had corn to spare) ; his faithful dog is bolting his leg of 
mutton — nay, a thief has gotten hold of his very candle, and 
there, by way of moral, is his ale-pot, which looks and winks 
in his face, and seems to say, O Bull, all this is froth, and a 
cruel satirical picture of a certain rustic who had a goose that 
laid certain golden eggs, which goose the rustic slew in expec- 
tation of finding all the eggs at once. - This is goose and sage 
too, to borrow the pun of "-learned Doctor Gill;" but we 
shrewdly suspect that Mr. Cruikshank is becoming a little con- 
servative in his notions. 

We love these pictures so that it is hard to part us, and we 
still fondly endeavor to hold on, but this wild word, farewell, 
must be spoken by the best friends at last, and so good-by, 
brave wood-cuts : we feel quite a sadness in coming to the last 
of our collection. 

In the earlier numbers of the Comic Almanac all the man- 
ners and customs of Londoners that would afford food for fun 
were noted down ; and if during the last two years, the mys- 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 623 

terious personage who, under the title of " Rigdum Funnidos," 
compiles this ephemeris, has been compelled to resort to ro- 
mantic tales, we must suppose that he did so because the great 
metropolis was exhausted, and it was necessary to discover 
new worlds in the cloud-land of fancy. The character of Mr. 
Stubbs, who made his appearance in the Abmviac for 1839, 
had, we think, great merit, although his adventures were 
somewhat of too tragical a description to provoke pure 
laughter. 

We should be glad to devote a few pages to the " Illustra- 
tions of Time," the " Scraps and Sketches," and the "Illustra- 
tions of Phrenology," which are among the most famous of our 
artist's publications ; but it is very difficult to find new terms 
of praise, as find them one must, when reviewing Mr. Cruik- 
shank's publications, and more difficult still (as the reader of 
this notice will no doubt have perceived for himself long since) 
to translate his design into words, and go to the printer's box 
for a description of all that fun and humor which the artist can 
produce by a few skilful turns of his needle. A famous ar- 
ticle upon the " Illustrations of Time " appeared some dozen 
years since in Blackzaood's Magazine, of which the conductors 
have always been great admirers of our artist, as became men 
of honor and genius. To these grand qualities do not let it be 
supposed that we are laying claim, but, thank heaven, Cruik- 
shank's humor is so good and benevolent that any man must 
love it, and on this score we may speak as well as another. 

Then there are the " Greenwich Hospital " designs, which 
must not be passed over. " Greenwich Hospital " is a hearty, 
good-natured book, in the Tom Dibdin school, treating of the 
virtues of British tars, in approved nautical language. They 
maul Frenchmen and Spaniards, they go out in brigs and take 
frigates, they relieve women in distress, and are yard-arm and 
yard-arming, athwart-hawsing, marlinspiking, binnacling, and 
helm's-a-leeing, as honest seamen invariably do, in novels, on 
the stage, and doubtless on board ship. This we cannot take 
upon us to say, but the artist, like a true Englishman, as he is, 
loves dearly *these brave guardians of Old England, and chron- 
icles their rare or fanciful exploits with the greatest good-will. 
Let any one look at the noble head of Nelson in the " Family 
Library," and they will, we are sure, think with us that the 
designer must have felt and loved what he drew. There are 
to this abridgment of Southey's admirable book many more 
cuts after Cruikshank ; and about a dozen pieces by the same 
hand will be found in a work equally popular, Lockhart's ex- 



624 CRIl-rCAL REVIEWS. 

cellent " Life of Napoleon." Among these the retreat from 
Moscow is very fine ; the Mamlouks most vigorous, furious, 
and barbarous, as they should be. At the end of these three 
volumes Mr. Cruikshank's contributions to the " Family Li- 
brary " seem suddenly to have ceased. 

We are not at all disposed to undervalue the works and 
genius of Mr. Dickens, and we are sure that he would admit as 
readily as any man the wonderful assistance that he has derived 
from the artist who has given us the portraits of his ideal per- 
sonages, and made them familiar to all the world. Once seen, 
these figures remain impressed on the memory, which otherwise 
would have had no hold upon them, and the heroes and hero^ 
ines of Boz become personal acquaintances with each of us. 
Oh, that Hogarth could have illustrated Fielding in the same 
way ! and fixed down on paper those grand figures of Parson 
Adams, and Squire Allworthy, and the great Jonathan Wild. 

With regard to the modern romance of " Jack Sheppard," 
in which the latter personage makes a second appearance, it 
seems to us that Mr. Cruikshank really created the tale, and 
that Mr. Ainsworth, as it were, only put words to it. Let any 
reader of the novel think over it for a while, now that it is some 
months since he has perused and laid it down — let him think, 
and tell us what he remembers of the tale ? George Cruik- 
shank's pictures — always George Cruikshank's pictures. The 
storm in the Thames, for instance : all the author's labored 
description of that event has passed clean away — we have only 
before the mind's eye the fine plates of Cruikshank : the poor 
wretch cowering under the bridge arch, as the waves come 
rushing in, and the boats are whirling away in the drift of the 
great swollen black waters. And let any man look at that 
second plate of the murder on the Thames, and he must ac- 
knowledge how much more brilliant the artist's description is 
than the writer's, and what a real genius for the terrible as well 
as for the ridiculous the former has ; how awful is the gloom 
of the old bridge, a few lights glimmering from the houses here 
and there, but not so as to be reflected on the water at all, 
which is too turbid and raging : a great heavy rack of clouds 
goes sweeping over the bridge, and men with flaring torches, 
the murderers, are borne away with the stream. 

The author requires many pages to describe the fury of the 
storm, which Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, 
he has to prepare you with the something inexpressibly melan- 
choly in sailing on a dark night upon the Thames : " the ripple 
of the water," " the darkling current," " the indistinctively seen 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 625 

craft," " the solemn shadows " and other phenomena visible on 
rivers at night are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric) in order 
to bring the reader into a proper frame of mind for the deeper 
gloom and horror which is to ensue. Then follow pages of 
description. " As Rowland sprang to the helm, and gave the 
signal for pursuit, a war like a volley of ordnance was heard 
aloft, and the wind again burst its bondage. A moment before, 
the surface of the stream was as black as ink. It was now 
whitening, hissing, and seething, like an enormous cauldron. 
The blast once more swept over the agitated river, whirled off 
the sheets of foam, scattered them far and wide in rain-drops, 
and left the raging torrent blacker than before. Destruction 
everywhere marked the course of the gale. Steeples toppled 
and towers reeled beneath its fury. All was darkness, horror, 
confusion, ruin. Men fled from their tottering habitations and 
returned to them, scared by greater danger. The end of the 
world seemed at hand. * * * The hurricane had now 
reached its climax. The blast shrieked, as if exulting in its 
wrathful mission. Stunning and continuous, the din seemed 
almost to take away the power of hearing. He who had faced 
the gale 7uoiild have been instantly stifled,^'' &c., &c. See with 
what a tremendous war of words (and good loud words too ; 
Mr. Ainsworth's description is a good and spirited one) the 
author is obliged to pour in upon the reader before he can 
effect his purpose upon the latter, and inspire him with a proper 
tCiTor. The painter does it at a glance, and old Wood's 
dilemma in the midst of that tremendous storm, with the little 
infant at his bosom, is remembered afterwards, not from the 
words, but from the visible image of them that the artist has 
left us. 

It would not, perhaps, be out of place to glance through the 
whole of the "Jack Sheppard " plates, which are among the 
most finished and the most successful of Mr. Cruikshank's per- 
formances, and say a word or two concerning them. Let us 
begin with finding fault with No. i, " Mr. Wood offers to adopt 
little Jack Sheppard." A poor print, on a poor subject ; the 
figure of the woman not as carefully designed as it might be, 
and the expression of the eyes (not an uncommon fault with 
our artist) much caricatured. The print is cut up, to use the 
artist's phrase, by the number of accessories which the engraver 
has thought proper, after the author's elaborate description, 
elaborately to reproduce. The plate of " Wild discovering 
Darrell in the loft " is admirable — ghastly, terrible, and the 
treatment of it extraordinarily skilful, minute, and bold. The 

40 



626 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

intricacies of the tile-work, and tlie mysterious twinkling of 
light among the beams, are excellently felt and rendered ; and 
one sees here, as in the two next plates of the storm and mur- 
der, what a fine eye the artist has, what a skilful hand, and 
what a sympathy for the wild and dreadful. As a mere imita- 
tion of nature, the clouds and the bridge in the murder picture 
may be examined by painters who make far higher pretensions 
than Mr. Cruikshank. In point of workmanship they are 
equally-good, the manner quite unaffected, the effect produced 
without any violent contrast, the whole scene evidently well 
and philosophically arranged in the artist's brain, before he 
began to put it upon copper. 

The famous drawing of "Jack carving the name on the 
beam," which has been transferred to half the play-bills in town, 
is overloaded with accessories, as the first plate ; but they are 
much better arranged than in the last-named engraving, and 
do not injure the effect of the principal figure. Remark, too, 
the conscientiousness of the artist, and that shrewd pervading 
idea oiform which is one of his principal characteristics. Jack 
is surrounded by all sorts of implements of his profession ; he 
stands on a regular carpenter's table : away in the shadow 
under it lie shavings and a couple of carpenter's hammers. The 
glue-pot, the mallet, the chisel-handle, the planes, the saws, the 
hone with its cover, and the other paraphernalia are all rep- 
resented with extraordinary accuracy and forethought. The 
man's mind has retained the exact drawing of all these minute 
objects (unconsciously perhaps to himself), but we can see with 
what keen eyes he must go through the world, and what a fund 
of facts (as such a knowledge of the shape of objects is in his 
profession) this keen student of nature has stored away in his 
brain. In the next plate, where Jack is escaping from his 
mistress, the figure of that lady, one of the deepest of the 
liadi'y/oX-ot^ strikes us as disagreeable and unrefined ; that of 
Winifred is, on the contrary, very pretty and graceful , and 
Jack's puzzled, slinking look must not be forgotten. All the 
accessories are good, and the apartment has a snug, cosy air ; 
which is not remarkable, except that it shows how faithfully the 
designer has performed his work, and how curiously he has en- 
tered into all particulars of the subject. 

Master Thames Darrell, the handsome young man of the 
book is, in Mr. Cruikshank's portraits of him, no favorite of 
ours. The lad seems to wish to make up for the natural in- 
significance of his face by frowning on all occasions most por- 
tentously. This figure, borrowed from the compositor's desk, 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 627 

* # ^ will give a notion of what we mean. Wild's face is 
"^^^u*^ too violent for the great man of history (if we may 

|, call Fielding history), but this is in consonance with 

~ the ranting, frowning, braggadocio character that Mr. 
Ainsworth has given him. 

The " Interior of Willesden Church " is excellent as a com- 
position, and a piece of artistical workmanship ; the groups are 
well arranged ; and the figure of Mrs. Sheppard looking around 
alarmed, as her son is robbing the dandy Kneebone, is charming, 
simple, and unaffected. Not so " Mrs. Sheppard ill in bed," 
whose face is screwed up to an expression vastly too tragic. 
The little glimpse of the church seen through the open door of 
the room is very beautiful and poetical : it is in such small 
hints that an artist especially excels ; they are the morals which 
he loves to append to his stories, and are always appropriate 
and welcome. The boozing ken is not to our liking ; Mrs. 
Sheppard is there with her horrified eyebrows again. Why this 
exaggeration — is it necessary for the public ? We think not, 
or if they require such excitement, let our artist, like a true 
painter as he is, teach them better things.* 

The " Escape from Willesden Cage " is excellent ; the 
"Burglary in Wood's house " has not less merit; "Mrs. Shep- 
pard in Bedlam," a ghastly picture indeed, is finely conceived, 
but not, as we fancy, so carefully executed ; it would be better 
for a little more careful drawing in the female figure. 

" Jack sitting for his picture," is a very pleasing group, and 
savors of the manner of Hogarth, who is introduced in the 
company. The " Murder of Trenchard " must be noticed too 
as remarkable for the effect and terrible vigor which the artist 
has given to the scene. The " Willesden Churchyard " has 
great merit too, but the gems of the book are the little vig- 
nettes illustrating the escape from Newgate. Here, too, much 
anatomical care of drawing is not required ; the figures are so 
small that the outline and attitude need only to be indicated, 
and the designer has produced a series of figures quite remark- 
able for reality and poetry too. There are no less than ten of 
Jack's feats so described by Mr. Cruikshank. (Let us say a 

* A gentleman (whose wit is so celebrated that one should be very cautious in repeating 

his stories) gave the writer a good illustration of the philosophy of exaggeration. Mr. 

was once behind the scenes at the Opera when the scene-shifters were preparing for the bal- 
let. Flora v/as to sleep under a bush, whereon were growing a number of roses, and 
amidst which was fluttering a gay covey of butterflies. In size the roses exceeded the most 
expensive sim-flnwers, and the butterflies were as large as cocked hats ; — the scene-shifter 

explained to Mr. , who asked the reason why everything was so magiiifipd, that the 

galleries could never see the objects unless they were enormously exaggerated. How many 
of our writers and designers work for the galleries ? 



628 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

word here in praise of the excellent manner in which the 
author has carried us through the adventure.) Here is Jack 
clattering up the chimney, now peering into the lonely red 
room, now opening " the door between the red room and the 
chapel." What a wild, fierce, scared look he has, the young 
ruffian, as cautiously he steps in, holding light his bar of iron. 
You can see by his face how his heart is beating ! If any one 
were there ! but no ! And this is a very fine characteristic of 
the prints, the extreme loneliness of them all. Not a soul is 
there to disturb him — woe to him who should — and Jack drives 
in the chapel gate, and shatters down the passage door, and 
there you have him on the leads. Up he goes ! it is but a 
spring of a few feet from the blanket, and he is gone — abiit, 
evasif, erupit ! Mr. Wild must catch him again if he can. 

We must not forget to mention " Oliver Twist," and Mr. 
Cruikshank's famous designs to that work.* The sausage 
scene at Fagin's, Nancy seizing the boy ; that capital piece of 
humor, Mr. Bumble's courtship, which is even better in Cruik- 
shank's version than in Boz's exquisite account of the inter- 
view ; Sykes's farewell to the dog ; and the Jew, — the dreadful 
Jew — that Cruikshank drew ! What a fine touching picture of 
melancholy desolation is that of Sykes and the dog ! The 
poor cur is not too well drawn, the landscape is stiff and 
formal ; but in this case the faults, if faults they be, of execu- 
tion rather add to than diminish the effect of the picture : it 
has a strange, wild, dreary, broken-hearted look ; we fancy we 
see the landscape as it must have appeared to Sykes, when 
ghastly and with bloodshot eyes he looked at it. As for the 
Jew in the dungeon, let us say nothing of it — what can we say 
to describe it .'' What a fine homely poet is the man who can 
produce this little world of mirth or woe for us ! Does he 
elaborate his effects by slow process of thought, or do they 
come to him by instinct ? Does the painter ever arrange in his 
brain an image so complete, that he afterwards can copy it 
exactly on the canvas, or does the hand work in spite of him ? 

A great deal of this random work of course every artist has 
done in his time ; many men produce effects of which they 
never dreamed, and strike off excellences, haphazard, which 
gain for them reputation ; but a fine quality in Mr. Cruikshank, 
the quality of his success, as we have said before, is the extraor- 
dinary earnestness and good faith with which he executes all he 
attempts — the ludicrous, the polite, the low, the terrible. In 

* Or liis new work, " The Tower of London," which promises even to surpass Mr, 
Cruikshank's former productions. 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 



629 



the second of these he often, in our fancy, fails, liis figures 
lacking elegance and descending to caricature ; but there is 
somethmg fine in this too : it is good that he s/iould fail, that 
he should have these honest nawe notions regarding the l>eaii 
fnonife, the characteristics of which a namby-pamby tea-party 
painter could hit off far better than he. He is a great deal too 
downright and manly to appreciate the flimsy delicacies of 
small society — you cannot expect a lion to roar you like any 
sucking dove, or frisk about a drawing-room like a lady's little 
spaniel. 

If then, in the course of his life and business, he has been 
occasionally obliged to imitate the ways of such small animals, 
he has done so, let us say it at once, clumsily, and like as a 
lion should. Many artists, we hear, hold his works rather 
cheajD ; they prate about bad drawing, want of scientific knowl- 
edge ; — they would have something vastly more neat, regular, 
anatomical. 

Not one of the whole band most likely but can paint an 
Academy figure better than himself ; nay, or a portrait of an 
alderman's lady and family of children. But look down the 
list of the painters and tell us who are they ? How many 
among these men are f>oets (makers), possessing the faculty to 
create, the greatest among the gifts with which Providence has 
endowed the mind of man ? Say how many there are, count 
up what they have done, and see what in the course of some 
nine-and-twenty years has been done by this indefatigable man. 

What amazing energetic fecundity do we find in him ! As 
a boy he began to fight for bread, has been hungry (twice a 
day we trust) ever since, and has been obliged to sell his wit 
for his bread week by week. And his wit, sterling gold as it 
is, will find no such purchasers as the fashionable painter's 
thin pinchbeck, who can live comfortably for six weeks, when 
paid for and painting a portrait, and fancies his mind prodigi- 
ously occupied all the while. There was an artist in Paris, an 
artist hairdresser, who used to be fatigued and take restoratives 
after inventing a new coiffure. By no such gentle operation of 
head-dressing has Cruikshank lived : time was (we are told so 
in print) when for a picture with thirty heads in it he was paid 
three guineas — a poor week's pittance, truly, and a dire week's 
labor. We make no doubt that the same labor would at 
present bring him twenty times the sum ; but whether it be ill- 
paid or well, what labor has Mr. Cruikshank's been ! Week 
by week, for thirty years, to produce something new ; some 
smiling offspring of painful labor, quite independent and dis- 



630 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

tinct from its ten thousand jovial brethren ; in what hours of 
sorrow and ill-health to be told by the world, " Make us laugh 
or you starve — Give us fresh fun ; we have eaten up the old 
and are hungry." And all this has he been obliged to do — to 
wring laughter day by day, sometimes, perhaps, out of want, 
often certainly from ill-health or depression — to keep the fire 
of his brain perpetually alight : for the greedy public will give 
it no leisure to cool. This he has done and done well. He 
has told a thousand truths in as many strange and fascinating 
ways ; he has given a thousand new and pleasant thoughts to 
millions of people ; he has never used his wit dishonestly ; he 
has never, in all the exuberance of his frolicsome humor, caused 
a single painful or guilty blush : how little do we think of the 
extraordinary power of this man, and how ungrateful we are 
to him ! 

Here, as we are come round to the charge of ingratitude, 
the starting-post from which we set out, perhaps we had better 
conclude. The reader will perhaps wonder at the high-flown 
tone in which we speak of the services and merits of an indi- 
vidual, whom he considers a humble scraper on steel, that is 
wonderfully popular already. But none of us remember all the 
benefits we owe him ; they have come one by one, one driving 
out the memory of the other . it is only when we come to ex- 
amine them altogether, as the writer has done, who has a pile 
of books on the table before him — a heap of personal kind- 
nesses from George Cruikshank (not presents, if you please, 
for we bought, borrowed, or stole every one of them) — that we 
feel what we owe him. Look at one of Mr, Cruikshank's 
works, and we pronounce him an excellent humorist. Look at 
all : his reputation is increased by a kind of geometrical pro- 
gression ; as a whole diamond is a hundred times more valu- 
able than the hundred splinters into which it might be broken 
would be. A fine rough English diamond is this about which 
we have been writing. 



JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 631 



yOHN LEECH'S PICTURES OF LIFE AND 
CHARACTER. * 

We, who can recall the consulship of Plancus, and quite 
respectable, old fogeyfied times, remember amongst other 
amusements which we had as children the pictures at which 
we were permitted to look. There was Boydell's Shakspeare, 
black and ghastly gallery of murky Opies, glum Northcotes, 
straddling Fuselis ! there were Lear, Oberon, Hamlet, with 
starting muscles, rolling eyeballs, and long pointing quivering 
fingers ; there was little Prince Arthur (Northcote) crying, in 
white satin, and bidding good Hubert not put out his eyes ; 
there was Hubert crying; there was little Rutland being run 
through the poor little body by bloody Clifford ; there was 
Cardinal Beaufort (Reynolds) gnashing his teeth, and grinning 
and howling demoniacally on his death-bed (a picture frightful 
to the present day) ; there was Lady Hamilton (Romney) wav- 
ing a torch, and dancing before a black background, — a melan- 
choly museum indeed. Smirke's delightful " Seven Ages " 
only fitfully relieved its general gloom. We did not like to 
inspect it unless the elders were present, and plenty of lights 
and company were in the room. 

Cheerful relatives used to treat us to Miss Linwood's. Let 
the children of the present generation thank their stars that 
tragedy is put out of the way. Miss Linwood's was worsted- 
work. Your grandmother or grandaunts took you there, and 
said the pictures were admirable. You saw " the Woodman " 
in worsted, with his axe and dog, trampling through the snow; 
the snow bitter cold to look at, the woodman's pipe wonderful ; 
a gloomy piece, that made you shudder. There were large 
dingy pictures of woollen martyrs, and scowling warriors with 
limbs strongly knitted ; there was especially, at the end of a 
black passage, a den of lions, that would frighten any boy not 
born in Africa, or Exeter 'Change, and accustomed to them. 

Another exhibition used to be West's Gallery, where the 
pleasing figures of Lazarus in his grave-clothes, and Death on 
the pale horse, used to impress us children. The tombs of 

• Reprinted from the Quarterly Review, No. 191, Dec. 1854, by permission of Mr. 
John Murray. 



632 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

Westminster Abbey, the vaults at St. Paul's, the men in ar- 
mor at the- Tower, frowning ferociously out of their helmets, 
and wielding their dreadful swords ; that superhuman Queen 
Elizabeth at the end of the room, a livid sovereign, with glass 
eyes, a ruff, and a dirty satin petticoat, riding a horse covered 
with steel : who does not remember these sights in London in 
the consulship of Plancus ? and the wax-work in Fleet Street, 
not like that of Madame Tussaud's, whose chamber of death 
is gay and brilliant ; but a nice old gloomy waxwork, full of 
murderers ; and as a chief attraction, the Dead Baby and 
Princess Charlotte lying in state ? 

Our story-books had no pictures in them for the most part. 
Frank (dear old Frank !) had none ; nor the " Parent's Assist- 
ant ; " nor the "'Evenings at Home;" nor our copy of the 
" Ami des Enfans ; " there were a few just at the end of the 
Spelling-Book ; besides the allegory at the beginning, of Edu- 
cation leading up Youth to the temple of Industry, where Dr. 
Dilworth and Professor Walkinghame stood with crowns of 
laurels. There were, we say, just a few pictures at the end of 
the Spelling-Book, little oval gray wood-cuts of Bewick's, mostly 
of the Wolf and the Lamb, the Dog and the Shadow, and 
Brown, Jones, and Robinson with long ringlets and little tights ; 
but for pictures, so to speak, what had we ? The rough old 
wood-blocks in the harlequin-backed fairy-books had served 
hundreds of years ; before oicr Plancus, in the time of Priscus 
Plancus — in Queen Anne's time, who knows ? We w-ere 
flogged at school ; we were fifty boys in our boarding-hoifse, 
and had to wash in a leaden trough, under a cistern, with lumps 
of fat yellow soap floating about in the ice and water. Are 
our sons ever flogged ? Have they not dressing-rooms, hair- 
oil, hip-baths, and Baden towels ? And what picture-books 
the young villains have 1 What have these children done that 
they should be so much happier than we were ? 

We had the " Arabian Nights " and Walter Scott, to be 
sure. Smirke's illustrations to the former are very fine. We 
did not know how good they were then ; but we doubt whether 
we did not prefer the little old " Miniature Library Nights " 
with fronti^ieces by Uwins ; for these books the pictures don't 
count. Every boy of imagination does his own pictures to 
Scott and the " Arabian Nights " best. 

Of funny pictures there were none especially intended for 
us children. There was Rowlandson's "Doctor Syntax:" 
Doctor Syntax, in a fuzz-wig, on a horse with legs like sausages, 
riding races, making love, frolicking with rosy exuberant dam- 



JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 633 

sels. Those pictures were very funny, and that aquatinting 
and the gay-colored plates very pleasant to witness ; but if we 
could not read the poem in those days, could we digest it in 
this ? Nevertheless, apart from the text which we could not 
master, we remember Doctor Syntax pleasantly, like those 
cheerful painted hieroglyphics in the Nineveh Court at Syden- 
ham. What matter for the arrow-head, illegible stuff? give us 
the placid grinning kings, twanging their jolly bows over their 
rident horses, wounding those good-humored enemies, who 
tumble gayly off the towers, or drown, smiling in the dimpling 
waters, amidst the anerithmon gelasma of the fish. 

After Doctor Syntax, the apparition of Corinthian Tom, 
Jerry Hawthorn, and the facetious Bob Logic must be recorded 
— a wondrous history indeed theirs was! When the future 
student of our manners comes to look over th.e pictures and 
the writing of these queer volumes, what will he think of our 
society, customs, and language in the Consulship of Plancus ? 
" Corinthian," it appears, was the phrase applied to men of 
fashion and ton in Plancus's time : they were the brilliant pre- 
decessors of the "swell" of the present period — brilliant, but 
somewhat barbarous, it must be confessed. The Corinthians 
were in the habit of drinking a great deal too much in Tom 
Cribb's parlor . they used to go and see " life " in the gin-shops ; 
of nights, walking home (as well as they could), they used to 
knock down " Charleys," poor harmless old watchmen with 
lanterns, guardians of the streets of Rome, Planco Consule. 
They perpetrated a vast deal of boxing ; they put on the "muf- 
flers " in Jackson's rooms ; they " sported their prads " in the 
Ring in the Park ; they attended cock-fights, and were enlight- 
ened patrons of dogs and destroyers of rats. Besides these 
sports, the delassemens of gentlemen mixing with the people, 
our patricians, of course, occasionally enjoyed the society of 
their own class. What a wonderful picture that used to be of 
Corinthian Tom dancing with Corinthian Kate at Almack's ! 
What a prodigious dress Kate wore ! With what graceful 
abafidon the pair flung their arms about as they swept through 
the mazy quadrille, with all the noblemen standing round in 
their stars and uniforms ! You may still, doubtless, see the 
pictures at the British Museum, or find the volumes in the 
corner of some old country-house library. You are led to sup- 
pose that the English aristocracy of 1820 did dance and caper 
in that way, and box and drink at Tom Cribb's, and knock 
down watchmen ; and the children of to-day, turning to their 
elders, may say, " Grandmamma, did you wear such a dress as 



634 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

that when you danced at Almack's ? There was very little of 
it, grandmamma. Did grandpapa kill many watchmen when 
he was a young man, and frequent thieves' gin-shops, cock- 
fights and the ring, before you married him ? Did he used to 
talk the extraordinary slang and jargon which is printed in this 
book ? He is very much changed. He seems a gentlemanly 
old boy enough now." 

In the above-named consulate, when we had grandfathers 
alive, there would be in the old gentleman's library in the 
country two or three old mottled portfolios, or great swollen 
scrap-books of blue paper, full of the comic prints of grand- 
papa's time, ere Plancus ever had the fasces borne before him. 
These prints were signed Gilra}^, Bunbury, Rowlandson, Wood- 
ward, and some actually George Cruikshank — for George is a 
veteran now, and he took the etching needle in hand as a child. 
He caricatured " Boney," borrowing not a little from Gilray in 
his first puerile efforts. He drew Louis XVHI, trying on 
Boney's boots. Before the century was actually in its teens 
we believe that George Cruikshank was amusing the public. 

In those great colored prints in our grandfathers' portfolios 
in the library, and in some other apartments of the house, 
where the caricatures used to be pasted in those days, we found 
things quite beyond our comprehension. Boney was represent- 
ed as a fierce dwarf, with goggle eyes, a huge laced hat and 
tricolored plume, a crooked sabre, reeking with blood : a little 
demon revelling in lust, murder, massacre. John Bull was 
shown kicking him a good deal : indeed he was prodigiously 
kicked all through that series of pictures ; by Sidney Smith 
and our brave allies the gallant Turks ; by the excellent and 
patriotic Spaniards ; by the amiable and indignant Russians, 
■ — all nations had boots at the service of poor Master Boney. 
How Pit used to defy him ! How good old George, King of 
Brobdingnag, laughed at Gulliver-Boney, sailing about in his 
tank to make sport for their Majesties ! This little fiend, this 
beggar's brat, cowardly, murderous, and atheistic as he was 
(we remember in those old portfolios, pictures representing 
Boney and his family in rags, gnawing raw bones in a Corsican 
hut ; Boney murdering the sick at Jaffa ; Boney with a hookah 
and a large turban, having adopted the Turkish religion, &c.) 
— this Corsican monster, nevertheless, had some devoted 
friends in England, according to the Gilray chronicle, — a set 
of villains who loved atheism, tyranny, plunder, and wickedness 
in general, like tlieir French friend. In the pictures these men 
were all represented as dwarfs, like their ally. The miscreants 



JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 635 

got into power at one time, and, if we remember right, were 
called the Broad-backed Administration. One with shaggy 
eyebrows and a bristly beard, the hirsute ringleader of the ras- 
cals, was, it appears, called Charles James Fox; another mis- 
creant, with a blotched countenance, was a certain Sheridan ; 
other imps were hight Erskine, Norfolk (Jockey of), Moira, 
Henry Petty. As in our childish innocence we used to look 
at these demons, now sprawling and tipsy in their cups , now 
scaling heaven, from which the angelic Pitt hurled them down ; 
now cursing the light (their atrocious ringleader Fox was re- 
presented with hairy cloven feet, and a tail and horns) ; now 
kissing Boney's boot, but inevitably discomfited by Pitt and 
the other good angels : we hated these vicious wretches, as 
good children should ; we were on the side of Virtue and Pitt 
and Grandpapa. But if our sisters wanted to look at the port- 
folios, the good old grandfather used to hesitate. There were 
some prints among them very old indeed ; some that girls could 
not understand ; some that boys, indeed, had best not see. We 
swiftly turn over those prohibited pages. Flow many of them 
there were in the wild, coarse, reckless, ribald, generous book 
of old English humor ! 

How savage the satire was — how fierce the assault — what 
garbage hurled at opponents — what foul blows were hit — what 
language of Billingsgate fiung ! Fancy a party in a country- 
house now looking over Woodward's facetiae or some of the 
Gilray comicalities, or the slatternly Saturnalia of Rowlandson ! 
Whilst we live we must laugh, and have folks to make us laugh. 
We cannot afford to lose Satyr with his pipe and dances and 
gambols. But we have washed, combed, clothed, and taught 
the rogue good manners : or rather, let us sav, he has learned 
them himself; for he is of nature soft and kindly, and he has 
put aside his mad pranks and tipsy habits ; and frolicsome 
always, has become gentle and harmless, smitten into shame 
by the pure presence'of our women and the sweet confiding 
smiles of our children. Among the veterans, the old pictorial 
satirists, we have mentioned the famous name of one humorous 
designer who is still alive and at work. Did we not see, by his 
own hand, his own portrait of his own famous face, and whisk- 
ers, in the Illustrated London News the other day .'' There was 
a print in that paper of an assemblage of teetotallers in " Sad- 
ler's Well's Theatre," and we straightway recognized the old 
Roman hand — the old Roman's of the time of Plancus — George 
Cruikshank's. There were the old bonnets and droll faces and 
shoes, and short trousers, and figures of 1820 sure enough. 



636 CRITICAL REVIEWS 

And there was George (who has taken to the water-doctrine, as 
all the world knows) handing some teetotalleresses over a plank 
to the table where the pledge was being administered. How 
often has George drawn that picture of Cruikshank ! Where 
haven't we seen it ? How fine it was, facing the effigy of Mr.. 
Ainsworth in Ainsworth' s Magazine when George illustrated 
that periodical ! How grand and severe he stands in that de- 
sign in G. C.'s " Omnibus," where he represents himself tonged 
like St. Dunstan, and tweaking a wretch of a publisher by the 
nose ! The collectors of George's etchings — oh the charming 
etchings! — oh the dear old "German Popular Tales!" — the 
capital " Points of Humor " — the delightful " Phrenology " and 
" Scrap-books," of the good time, our time — Plancus's in fact! 
— the collectors of the Georgian etchings, we say, have at least 
a hundred pictures of the artist. Why, we remember him in 
his favorite Hessian boots in " Tom and Jerry " itself ; and in 
wood-cuts as far back as the Queen's trial. He has rather de- 
serted satire and comedy of late years, having turned his atten- 
tion to the serious, and warlike, and sublime. Having confessed 
our age and prejudices, we prefer the comic and fanciful to the 
historic, romantic, and at present didactic George. May re- 
spect, and length of days, and comfortable repose attend the 
brave, honest, kindly, pure-minded artist, humorist, moralist ! 
It was he first who brought English pictorial humor and 
children acquainted. Our young people and their fathers and 
mothers owe him many a pleasant hour and harmless laugh. 
Is there no way in which the country could acknowledge the 
long services and brave career of such a friend and benefactor.' 

Since George's time humor has been converted. Gomus 
and his wicked satyrs and leering fauns have disappeared, and 
fled into the lowest haunts ; and Gomu3's lady_(if she had a 
taste for humor, which may be doubted) might take up our 
funny picture-books without the slightest precautionary squeam- 
ishness. What can be purer than the charming fancies of 
Richard Doyle ? In all Mr. Punch's huge galleries can't we 
walk as safely as through Miss Pinkerton's school-rooms ? 
And as we look at Mr. Punch's pictures, at the Illustrated News 
pictures, at all the pictures in the book-shop windows at this 
Christmas season, as oldsters, we feel a certain pang of envy 
against the youngsters — they are too well off. Why hadn't we 
picture-books ? Why were we flogged so ? A plague on the 
lictors and their rods in the time of Plancus ! 

And now, after this rambling preface, we are arrived at the 
subject in hand — Mr. John Leech and his " Pictures of Life and 



JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES 637 

Character," in the collection of Mr. Punch, This book is 
better than plum-cake at Christmas. It is an enduring plum- 
cake, which you may eat and which you may slice and deliver 
to your friends ; and to which, having cut it, you may come 
again and welcome, from year's end to year's end. In the 
frontispiece you see Mr. Punch examining the pictures in his 
gallery — a portly, well-dressed, middle-aged, respectable gentle- 
man, in a white neck-cloth, and a polite evening costume — 
smiling in a very bland and agreeable manner upon one of his 
pleasant drawings, taken out of one of his handsome portfolios. 
Mr. Punch has very good reason to smile at the work and be 
satisfied with the artist. Mr. Leech, his chief contributor, and 
some kindred humorists, with pencil and pen have served Mr. 
Punch admirably. Time was, if we remember Mr. P.'s history 
rightly, that he did not wear silk stockings nor well-made clothes 
(the little dorsal irregularity in his figure is almost an ornament 
now, so excellent a tailor has he). He was of humble begin- 
nings. It is said he kept a ragged little booth, which he put 
up at corners of streets ; associated with beadles, policemen, 
his own ugly wife (whom he treated most scandalously), and 
persons in a low station of life; earning a precarious livelihood 
by the cracking of wild jokes, the singing of ribald songs, and 
halfpence extorted from passers-by. He is the Satyric genius 
we spoke of anon ; he cracks his jokes still, for satire must 
hve ; but he is combed, washed, neatly clothed, and perfectly 
presentable. He goes into the very best company ; he keeps 
a stud at Melton , he has a moor in Scotland ; he rides in the 
Park ; has his stall at the Opera; is constantly dining out at 
clubs and in private society ; and goes every night in the sea- 
son to balls and parties, where you see the most beautiful 
women possible. He is welcomed amongst his new friends the 
great ; though, like the good old English gentleman of the 
song, he does not forget the small. He pats the heads of 
street boys and girls ; relishes the jokes of Jack the coster- 
monger and Bob the dustman ; good-naturedly spies out Molly 
the cook flirting with policeman X, or Mary the nursemaid as 
she listens to the fascinating guardsman. He used rather to 
laugh at guardsmen, " plungers," and other military men ; and 
was until latter days very contemptuous in his behavior towards 
Frenchmen. He has a natural antipathy to pomp, and swag- 
ger, and fierce demeanor. But now that the guardsmen are 
gone to war, and the dandies of " The Rag " — dandies no more 
— are battling like heroes at Balaklava and Inkermann * by the 

• This was written in 1S54. 



638 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

side of their heroic allies, Mr. Punch's laughter is changed to 
hearty respect and enthusiasm. It is not against courage and 
honor he wars : but this great moralist — must it be owned ? 
■ — has some popular British prejudices, and these led him in 
peace time to laugh at soldiers and Frenchmen. If those 
hulking footmen who accompanied the carriages to the opening 
of Parliament the other day, would form a plush brigade, wear 
only gunpowder in their hair, and strike with their great canes 
on the enemy, Mr. Punch would leave off laughing at Jeames, 
who meanwhile remains among us, to all outward appearance 
regardless of satire, and calmly consuming his five meals 
per diem. Against lawyers, beadles, bishops and clergy, and 
authorities, Mr. Punch is still rather bitter. At the time of the 
Papal aggression he was prodigiously angry ; and one of the 
chief misfortunes which happened to him at that period was 
that, through the violent opinions which he expressed regarding 
the Roman Catholic hierarchy, he lost the inv^aluable services, 
the graceful pencil, the harmless wit, the charming fancy of 
Mr. Doyle. Another member of Mr. Punch's cabinet, the 
biographer of Jeames, the author of the " Snob Papers," re- 
signed his functions on account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon 
the present Emperor of the French nation, whose anger Jeames 
thought it was unpatriotic to arouse. Mr. Punch parted with 
these contributors : he filled their places with others as good. 
The boys at the railroad stations cried Punch just as cheerily, 
and sold just as many numbers, after these events as before. 

There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet 
John Leech is the right-hand man. Fancy a number of Piaich 
without Leech's pictures ! What would you give for it .-• The 
learned gentlemen who write the work must feel that, with- 
out him, it were as well left alone. Look at the rivals whom 
the popularity of Punch has brought into the field ; the direct 
imitators of Mr. Leech's manner — the artists with a manner of 
their own^ — how inferior their pencils are to his in humor, in 
depicting the public manners, in arresting, amusing the nation. 
The truth, the strength, the free vigor, the kind humor, the 
John Bull pluck and spirit of that hand are approached by no 
competitor. With what dexterity he draws a horse, a woman, 
a child ! He feels them all, so to speak, like a man. What 
plump young beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's chief 
contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem ! What 
famous thews and sinews Mr. Punch's horses have, and how 
Briggs, on the back of them, scampers across country ! You 
see youth, strength, enjoyment, manliness in those drawings, 



JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 639 

and in none more so, to our thinking, than in the hundred 
pictures of children which this artist loves to design. Like a 
brave, hearty, good-natured Briton, he becomes quite soft and 
tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little golden 
heads, and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their 
sports, their jokes, laughter, caresses. Eiifans terribks come 
home from Eton ; young Miss practising her first flirtation ; 
poor little ragged Polly making dirt-pies in the gutter, or stag- 
gering under the weight of Jacky, her nursechild, who is as big 
as herself — all these little ones, patrician and plebeian, meet 
with kindness from this kind heart, and are watched with 
curious nicety by this amiable observer. 

We remember, in one of those ancient Gilray portfolios, a 
print which used to cause a sort of terror in us youthful spec- 
tators, and in which the Prince of Wales (his Royal Highness 
was a Foxite then) was represented as sitting alone in a mag- 
nificent hall after a voluptuous meal, and using a great steel 
fork in the guise of a toothpick. Fancy the first young gentle- 
man living employing such a weapon in such a way ! The most 
elegant Prince of Europe engaged with a two-pronged iron fork 
— the heir of Britannia with a bident ! The man of genius who 
drew that picture saw little of the society which he satirized and 
amused. Gilray watched public characters as they walked by 
the shop in St. James's Street, or passed through the lobby of 
the House of Commons. His studio was a garret, or little 
better ; his place of amusement a tavern-parlor, where his club 
held its nightly sittings over their pipes and sanded floor. You 
could not have society represented by men to whom it was not 
familiar. When Gavarni came to England a few years since — 
one of the wittiest of men, one of the most brilliant and dex- 
terous of draughtsmen — he published a book of " Les Anglais," 
and his Anglais were all Frenchmen. The eye, so keen and so 
long practised to observe Parisian life, could not perceive Eng- 
lish character. A social painter must be of the world which he 
depicts, and native to the manners which he portrays. 

Now, any one who looks over Mr. Leech's portfolio must see 
that the social pictures which he gives us are authentic. What 
comfortable little drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, what snug 
libraries we enter, what fine young-gentlemanly wags they are, 
those beautiful little dandies who wake up gouty old grandpapa 
to ring the bell ; who decline aunt's pudding and custards, 
saying that they will reserve themselves for an anchovy roast 
with the claret , who talk together in ballroom doors, where 
Fred whispers Charley — pointing to a dear little partner seven 



640 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

years old — " My dear Charley, she has very much gone off ; 
you should have seen that girl last season ! " Look well at 
everything appertaining to the economy of the famous Mr. 
Briggs : how snug, quiet, appropriate all the appointments are ! 
What a comfortable, neat, clean, middle-class house Eriggs's is 
(in the Bayswater suburb of London, we should guess from the 
sketches of the surrounding scenery) ! What a good stable he 
has, with a loose box for those celebrated hunters which he 
rides ! How pleasant, clean, and warm his breakfast- table 
looks ! What a trim little maid brings in the top-boots which 
horrify Mrs. B ! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete 
in all its appointments, and in which he appears trying on the 
delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire ! 
How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their dining-room : 
Briggs reading a Treatise on Dog-breaking by a lamp ; Mamma 
and Grannie with their respective needleworks ; the children 
clustering round a great book of prints — a great book of prints 
such as this before us, which, at this season, must make thou- 
sands of children happy by as many firesides ! The inner life 
of all these people is represented . Leech draws them as natur- 
ally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and 
stables. It is your house and mine , we are lookmg at every- 
body's family circle. Our boys coming from school give them- 
selves such airs, the young scapegraces ! our girls, going to 
parties, are so tricked out by fond mammas — a social history 
of London in the middle of the nineteenth century. As such, 
future students — lucky they to have a book so pleasant — will 
regard these pages . even the mutations of fashion they may 
follow here if they be so inclined. Mr. Leech has as fine an 
eye for tailory and millinery as for horse-flesh. How they 
change those cloaks and bonnets. How we have to pay mil- 
liners' bills from year to year ! Where are those prodigious 
chutelaines of 1S50 which no lady could be without ? Where 
those charming waistcoats, those '* stunning " waistcoats, which 
our young girls used to wear a few brief seasons back, and 
which cause 'Gus, in the sweet little sketch of " La Mode," to 
ask Ellen for her tailor's address. 'Gus is a young warrior by 
this time, very likely facing the enemy at Inkerman ; and 
pretty Ellen, and that love of a sister of hers, are married and 
happy, let us hope, superintending one of those delightful 
nursery scenes which our artists depicts with such tender humor. 
Fortunate artist, indeed ! You see he must have been bred at 
a good public school ; that he has ridden many a good horse 
in his day ; paid, no doubt, out of his own purse for the originals 



JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 641 

of some of those lovely caps and bonnets ; and watched pa- 
ternally the ways, smiles, frolics, and slumbers of his favorite 
little people. 

As you look at the drawings, secrets come out of them, — ■ 
private jokes, as it were, imparted to you by the author for your 
special delectation. How remarkably, for instance, has Mr. 
Leech observed the hair-dressers of the present age J Look 
at " Mr. Tongs," whom that hideous old bald woman, who ties 
on her bonnet at the glass, informs that " she has used the 
whole bottle of Balm of California, but her hair comes off yet." 
You can see the bear's-grease not only on Tongs' head but on 
his hands, which he is clapping clammily together. Remark 
him who is telling his client " there is cholera in the hair ; " 
and that lucky rogue whom the young lady bids to cut off " a 
long thick piece " — for somebody, doubtless. All these men 
are different, and delightfully natural and absurd. Why should 
hair-dressing be an absurd profession ? 

The amateur will remark what an excellent part hands play 
in Mr. Leech's pieces : his admirable actors use them with 
perfect naturalness. Look at Betty, putting the urn down ; at 
cook, laying her hands on the kitchen table, whilst her police- 
man grumbles at the cold meat. They are cook's and house- 
maid's hands without mistake, and not without a certain beauty 
too. The bald old lady, who is tying her bonnet at Tongs', 
has hands which you see are trembling. Watch the fingers of 
the two old harridans who are talking scandal : for what long 
years past they have pointed out holes in their neighbors' 
dresses and mud on their flounces. " Here's a go ! I've lost 
my diamond ring." As the dustman utters this pathetic cry, 
and looks at his hand, you burst out laughing. These are 
among the little points of humor. One could indicate hun- 
dreds of such as one turns over the pleasant pages. 

There is a little snob or gent, whom we all of us know, who 
wears little tufts on his little chin, outrageous pins and panta- 
loons, smokes cigars on tobacconists' counters, sucks his cane 
in the streets, struts about with Mrs. Snob and the baby (Mrs. 
S. an immense woman, whom Snob nevertheless bullies), who 
is a favorite abomination of Leech, and pursued by that savage 
humorist into a thousand of his haunts. There he is, choosing 
waistcoats at the tailor's — such waistcoats ! Vender he is giv- 
ing a shilling to the sweeper who calls him " Capting ; " now 
he is offering a paletot to a huge giant who is going out in the 
rain. They don't know their own pictures, very likely ; if they 
did, they would have a meeting, and thirty or forty of them 

41 



642 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

would be deputed to thrash Mr. Leech. One feels a pity for 
the poor little bucks. In a minute or two, when we close this 
discourse and walk the streets, we shall see a dozen such. 

Ere we shut the desk up, just one word to point out to the 
unwary specially to note the back grounds of landscapes in 
Leech's drawings — homely drawings of moor and wood, and 
sea-shore and London street — the scenes of his little dramas. 
They are as excellently true to nature as the actors themselves ; 
our respect for the genius and humor which invented both in- 
creases as we look and look again at the designs. May we 
have more of them ; more pleasant Christmas volumes, over 
which we and our children can laugh together. Can we have 
too much of truth, and fun, and beauty, and kindness ? 



.a 



THACKERAY'S COMPLETE WORKS. 



LO FELL'S POPULAR ILLUSTRATED EDITION. 

This is an entirely new edition of Mr. Thackeray's writings. It is 
beautifully printed from new electrotype plates, large, clear type, on fine 
paper, handsomely illustrated with over 200 full-page illustrations, and 
bound in cloth, gilt. It is the only large type edition printed in this 
country, and is the best, cheapest, and handsomest edition published. 

PRICES. 

11 volumes, i2mo., about 800 pages each, cloth, $16 50 

11 " '« " " half calf or morocco, 33 00 



I. VANITY FAIR. 
II. THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS. 

III. THE NEWCOMES. 

IV. THE VIRGINIANS. 

V. THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP, to which is prefixed A SHABBY GEN- 
TEEL STORY. 
VI. HENRY ESMOND, CATHARINE, DENIS DUVAL, AND LOVEL THE 

WIDOWER. 
VII. PARIS, IRISH, AND EASTERN SKETCHES. 
VIII. BARRY LYNDON, GREAT HOGGARTY DIAMOND, ETC.: 

Barry Lyndon. I Sketches and Travels in London. 

Great Hoggarty Diamond. | Character Sketches. 

Men's Wives. 

IX. ROUNDABOUT PAPERS, THE FOUR GEORGES, ETC.: 



Roundabout Papers. 
The Four Georges. 
English Humorists. 



Second Funeral of Napolson 
Critical Reviews. 
Selections from Punch. 



X. BURLESQUES, YELLOWPLUSH PAPERS, ETC.: 



Novels by Eminent Hands. 
Jeames's Diary. 

Adventures of Major Gahagan. 
A Legend of the Rhine. 
Rebecca and Rowena. 
The History of the next French 
Revolution. 



Cox's Diary. 

Yellowplush Papers. 

Fitzboodle Papers. 

The Wolves and the Lamb. 

The Bedford Row Conspiracy. 

A Little Dinner at Timmins's. 

The Fatal Boots. 



Little Travels. 

XI. CHRISTMAS BOOKS, BOOK OF SNOBS, AND BALLADS: 

Mrs. Perkins's Ball. I The Kickleburys on the Rhinb. 

Dr. Birch. The Rose and the Ring. 

Our Street. | Book of Snobs. 

Ballads. 

*5^* Any volume will be sold separately, bound in cloth, price ?5i.5o. 
The first six volumes, containing Mr. Thackeray's novels only, are put up sepa< 
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